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Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

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Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#11

Post by baha_man »

Tichy wrote: post #6
bkbleikamp wrote: post #2

I actually knew someone who could not figure out how to shut down their computer because it did not make sense to them to click "Start" to shut down.

I hope they figured it out eventually, though? It is not that hard a skill to learn. No offense, but I think there are a zillion other things that would be more important to simplify. Hasn't Joel even argued that shutting down the computer should be unnecessary in the future anyway?

'Hasn't Joel even argued that shutting down the computer should be unnecessary in the future anyway?'

Yes, he was also complaining about there being 9 options to chose from when leaving your Windows Vista computer:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/21.html

Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#12

Post by Hutzpah »

dazzawazza wrote: post #10
warwick wrote: post #3

This goes to show the value of actually watching users when they sit down in front of your system. Even though 'Click Start to Shutdown' seems unintuitive to all of us programmers, the usability study showed that it's what people expected. You can't really fault the Windows designers for following the users existing mental model rather than trying to change it.

Usability studies also show the cunning of the average user. It's difficult to know if what you have presented to them is good design or 'good enough' to allow _most_ users to cope. Combine this with people's knowledge that they are in a usability test, most people's desire to please authority figures and the natural skew to any process where you can affect outcome in your favour and usability studies become a mine f…

BUt it is far from 'good enough', it is a hindrance to productivity.

Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#13

Post by etal »

dazzawazza wrote: post #10
warwick wrote: post #3

This goes to show the value of actually watching users when they sit down in front of your system. Even though 'Click Start to Shutdown' seems unintuitive to all of us programmers, the usability study showed that it's what people expected. You can't really fault the Windows designers for following the users existing mental model rather than trying to change it.

Usability studies also show the cunning of the average user. It's difficult to know if what you have presented to them is good design or 'good enough' to allow _most_ users to cope. Combine this with people's knowledge that they are in a usability test, most people's desire to please authority figures and the natural skew to any process where you can affect outcome in your favour and usability studies become a mine f…

The catch is, once they do figure out one way of accomplishing a task -- even if it's complicated, unintuitive, and not really what you intended -- they'll cling to it and base future actions on that point of reference. So you can't "correct" the interface without further annoying the users who already figured out one way to do it.

Miguel de Icaza has an amazing post on this:

http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Jan-24-1.html

On the Mono download page, available versions for each platform were available as text links, with the platform's logo next to the links. Because of some configuration of the wiki engine they were using, images automatically linked to another page listing all the places where the same image is used. So, rather than clicking on the text link to download the latest version, 95 percent of Windows and Mac users would click on the logo, see the listing of other pages using the logo, scan that textual list for the highest version number (it's near the bottom of the list), visit the page for that one ancient version, and download it.

Aside: Noting that users will only read text as a last resort, and not always even then, I wonder what the success rate is for getting past Firefox 3's "this page's certificate is self-signed" warning. It can't be any better than Mono's.

Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#14

Post by Dauntless »

warwick wrote: post #3

This goes to show the value of actually watching users when they sit down in front of your system. Even though 'Click Start to Shutdown' seems unintuitive to all of us programmers, the usability study showed that it's what people expected. You can't really fault the Windows designers for following the users existing mental model rather than trying to change it.

It's still better than "Click Vista Orb to Shutdown" imho.

Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#16

Post by eru »

etal wrote: post #13
dazzawazza wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usability studies also show the cunning of the average user. It's difficult to know if what you have presented to them is good design or 'good enough' to allow _most_ users to cope. Combine this with people's knowledge that they are in a usability test, most people's desire to please authority figures and the natural skew to any process where you can affect outcome in your favour and usability studies become a mine f…

The catch is, once they do figure out one way of accomplishing a task -- even if it's complicated, unintuitive, and not really what you intended -- they'll cling to it and base future actions on that point of reference. So you can't "correct" the interface without further annoying the users who already figured out one way to do it. Miguel de Icaza has an amazing post on this: http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2008/Jan-…

"We of course feel terrible to all of the 95% of the users that wanted to try Mono on Windows and the Mac and ended up using a two year old version of Mono."

That's humility.

Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#19

Post by mhb »

breily wrote: post #18
mhb wrote: post #15

Will the sequel explain why, on Macs, you drag disk icons to the trash can to eject them? That always made me think twice about what I was doing.

As of at least 10.4 the trash can becomes an eject icon when you drag a disk.

I guess that shows you how much that freaked me out.

Re: Why do you have to click Start to shut down?

#20

Post by Hexstream »

mhb wrote: post #15

Will the sequel explain why, on Macs, you drag disk icons to the trash can to eject them? That always made me think twice about what I was doing.

Because if you want to put the physical CD into the actual trash you have to get it out of the computer first...
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