Live data from Hacker News

How inconsistent design will save iTunes

teedot.com

11–20 of 24 posts

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#11

This would work, if it didn't make things more difficult for less common tasks (many Linux distro's suffer this same problem, everything is great and productive when you are performing mainstream computing. However, cross the boundary slightly, and you'll find yourself in bash shell, which ruins all productivity benefits). Sorry, but this isn't a good idea. iTunes actually wouldn't be half bad if they permitted addon…

I assume when referring to productivity benefits you are actually referring to ease of learning? Command shells have huge productivity benefits if you know how to use them, their Achilles heel is that it takes quite a while to get used to and to the untrained user they are very daunting, whereas GUIs are more intuitive.

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#12

This would work, if it didn't make things more difficult for less common tasks (many Linux distro's suffer this same problem, everything is great and productive when you are performing mainstream computing. However, cross the boundary slightly, and you'll find yourself in bash shell, which ruins all productivity benefits). Sorry, but this isn't a good idea. iTunes actually wouldn't be half bad if they permitted addon…

I assume when referring to productivity benefits you are actually referring to ease of learning? Command shells have huge productivity benefits if you know how to use them, their Achilles heel is that it takes quite a while to get used to and to the untrained user they are very daunting, whereas GUIs are more intuitive.

They have productivity benefits for some things true, but they don't expose or constrain operations very well (ie, I have seen "professionals" do stuff like "rm -rf ~/ folder" before accidentally) .

CLI's are generally only good at administration tasks (such as moving files around). In the vast majority of cases though, a good GUI would probably be more productive to work with.

But once again, that's my opinion. Until CLI's can expose tasks better, their benefits will be limited.

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#13
So when my Mom learns to Google for iTunes tips, she will follow a tutorial and find that she's missing that UI element? And every tutorial step will include "if you don't see this, maybe you're using an old version, or maybe you need to hunt through the 'stuff that's been hidden' section and un-hide it?"

I prefer the Kathy Sierra idea that your program should make your users feel like "I am so smart", not "this program is so smart." Hiding stuff that you JUST KNOW you saw one time makes the user feel stupid.

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#14
This could work if Apple added a intelligent navigation agent that maybe asked you about where you wanted to go today. It could notice a brief pause in mouse movement (indicating that the user is trying to think of where to go next) and pop in and say, "Hi there human user, I'm L.P. Where do you want to go today?" The avatar of the agent would be a friendly looking record and would offer to reveal or hide various aspects of the user interface...

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#15
post #14

This could work if Apple added a intelligent navigation agent that maybe asked you about where you wanted to go today. It could notice a brief pause in mouse movement (indicating that the user is trying to think of where to go next) and pop in and say, "Hi there human user, I'm L.P. Where do you want to go today?" The avatar of the agent would be a friendly looking record and would offer to reveal or hide various asp…

Because software avatars proved so successful for Office...

This kind of thing is a kludge for an unfocussed, overly-featured app. Simple apps that only do what you want are much better. Kind of like iPods...

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#16
post #14

This could work if Apple added a intelligent navigation agent that maybe asked you about where you wanted to go today. It could notice a brief pause in mouse movement (indicating that the user is trying to think of where to go next) and pop in and say, "Hi there human user, I'm L.P. Where do you want to go today?" The avatar of the agent would be a friendly looking record and would offer to reveal or hide various asp…

Because software avatars proved so successful for Office... This kind of thing is a kludge for an unfocussed, overly-featured app. Simple apps that only do what you want are much better. Kind of like iPods...

OK, OK. How about this: Whenever the user launches iTunes, a non-modal dialog box that looks like a comic book text box would appear from the system clock and display a message like "You have unused features on your iTunes(tm). Would you like to make things more confusing by hiding them?"

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#17
Without worrying about whether adaptive behavior like the article describes is a good idea (I don't think it is), I want to take issue with this opening paragraph:

"Are you the visual type of person that thrive in an environment of photos and illustrations? Or do you prefer listening to a book instead of reading it? Or do you want to touch everything to make sure you understand it?"

This is a watered-down restatement of the "learning styles" theory from educational psychology that, while almost never stated explicitly or coherently, is the view that different people have particular preferences for either visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learning and interaction, and that these learning style preferences are more or less stable over time. The usual implication is that if you determine what a person's "style" is, you can adapt whatever you're trying to teach them to incorporate their preferred medium, and they will learn better than if you used, say, a visual lesson with an auditory learner.

Despite its frequent repetition as fact in lay sources like this one, the learning styles theory has never been substantiated by scientific research. Assessments of learning styles show no predictive validity for individual differences in response to instructional methods intended to focus one style or another. Oxford neuroscientist Susan Greenfield writes, "After more than 30 years of educational research in to learning styles there is no independent evidence that VAK, or indeed any other learning style inventory, has any direct educational benefits."

"Learning styles" is bunk, and casually repeating it as though it were an established mainstream theory is doing a disservice to science.

[End of slightly off-topic rant]

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#18
post #2

Apart from the fact that I believe this is a horrible, horrible idea (MS Office used to this to me with the menu items, worst idea ever) I believe there are more pressing matters to attend to when it comes to iTunes.

Agreed -- controls that reconfigure themselves disorient habitual users who begin to rely on spatial memory.

Even the iPad's reflow of icons when rotated is mildly disorienting, even though each group stays on its own page.

Ribbon bars and self-hiding menus do ok in focus groups for first time users because they haven't yet formed spatial memory around the task.

Blur your eyes so you can't read text and you still know where the Edit menu is. You know where it is, so that's where it should be.

Re: How inconsistent design will save iTunes

#20
Of all my problems and concerns about iTunes. Not for a single moment have I ever thought "I wish that search box was a bit bigger" or "that darn cover flow icon is wasting too much space, I wish there was more blank grey space here".

Performance increases will save iTunes. Not this horrendous "smart UI" idea.

I hate being so harsh in a comment, and feel mean for writing it. But iTunes is one of the worst programs I use on a regular basis (I have an iPhone) and practically dread using it, to the point where I don't sync my phone as often as I'd like just to avoid the kludge. It makes my 2.4GHz MBP feel slow. Nothing else makes it feel slow. They desperately need to rewrite this, and I'm all for a radical UI change too - even if it was quick, I don't find it a pleasure to use. It feels distinctly un-apple.

Post reply on HN