[IxDA Discuss] ease of use & interfaces for "power" users

[Esteban Barahona]

2007/1/16, Alok Jain <alok.ajain1 at gmail.com>:
>
> (...)For a customer service rep, the critical goal is speed, hence an
> interface with many options available upfront will possibly work for them.
> From intuitiveness perspective it could be worthwhile investing in training
> them. Similarly the other side of spectrum is for users where speed is not
> that important - e.g. Income Tax forms, they go through a lengthy session
> of questions one by one to ensure people understand what they are doing and
> do not make errors.
>

Those forms are complex in another way... it should be frustrating to not
have a "undo" if the user that is writting the answers makes 1 error.

Usability/ ease of use etc... is not really a binary as I see, it has shades
> of gray with trade offs in between and biggest trade off is between
> intuitiveness and efficiency.
>

In computer/informational systems, it may be better to stop searching for
intuitiveness. Some of us forget about how un-intuitive are computers. 3D
desktops may make this worst, now users have to deal with more variables (a
whole new spatial dimension! ...and only in the platform/library/enabler).
Applications can use 3D, but if it's actually useful (have anyone tried modo
202 <http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/>?).

Why not search for intuitiveness after the first crucial learning time of
use? ie: with the same example of the glider of Mac; after some (first time)
use I realized that if magnify-effect is smaller than icon-size has the same
result as disabling magnify (this is obvious if one pays attention, cuss
it's realizing that both attributes are proportional, they follow the same 2
vertical limit lines).

Using the desktop metaphor is, in my opinion, completely useless after the
first use. Carpets, Desktop, the diskette save button, etc are "useful" the
first time. But using an explanation="" attribute or text labels below an
icon is more clear... imagine someone that didn't saw a dikette look at the
icon that "says" save information.




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