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Free software scares normal people

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Re: Free software scares normal people

#101

Post by bryanlarsen »

ageitgey wrote: post #35
snovymgodym wrote: post #15

The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the functionality. Actual good UI/UX design isn't trivial and it tends to require a tight feedback loop between testers, designers, implementers, and users. A lot of FOSS simply doesn't have the resources to do that.

> The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the functionality. I'm not disagreeing with your basic take, but I think this part is a little more subtle. I'd argue that 80% of users (by raw user count) do want roughly the same 20% of functionality, most of the time. The problem in FOSS is that average user in the FOSS ecosystem is not remotely close to the profile of that 80%. The average FOSS user is part…

There's a good report/study about the complexity of Microsoft Word floating around somewhere.

It was something like:

- almost everybody only uses about 20% of the features of Word

- everybody's 20% is different, but

- ~80% of the 20% is common to most users.

- on the other hand, the remaining 20% of the 20% is widely distributed and covers basically all of the product.

So if you made a version of Word with 16% of its feature set you would almost make everybody happy. But really, nobody would be happy. There's no small feature set that makes most people happy.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#102

Post by cosmic_cheese »

gspencley wrote: post #98

A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to. My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user, however. When we started a new business, we needed certain applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to Windows. She hated it and begged for us to get a dedica…

Familiarity is massively undersold in the Linux desktop adoption discussion. Having desktop environments that are near 1:1 clones of the commercial platforms (preferably paired with a distribution that's designed to be bulletproof and practically never requires its user to fire up a terminal window) would go so far for making Linux viable for users sitting in the middle of the bell curve of technical capability.

It's one of those situations where "close enough" isn't. The fine details matter.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#103

Post by lamontcg »

zer00eyz wrote: post #78
WD-42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that, as has always been, the pool of people willing to code for free on their own time because it's fun is just much larger than the people willing to make icons for software projects on their own time because they think it's fun.

UI != icons. UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and watching people use their app... This is how we get UI's that work but suck to use. This is how we allow dark patterns to flourish. You can and will happily do things your users/customers hate if it makes a dent in the bottom of the eye and you dont have to face their criticisms directly.

> UI and UX are for all intents lost arts. No one is sitting on the other side of a 2 way mirror any more and watching people use their app...

Which is also why UI/UX on open source projects are generally going to suck.

There's certainly no money to pay for that kind of experiment.

And if you include telemetry, people lose their goddamn minds, assuming the open source author isn't morally against it to begin with.

The result is you're just getting the author's intuitive guesswork about UI/UX design, by someone who is likely more of a coder than a design person.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#104

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

ang_cire wrote: post #44
radial_symmetry wrote: post #33

Makes a good point, but the headline bothers me. It isn't the free that is the problem, it is the complexity.

Yep, the Adobe tools and basically all professionally-used CAD software are incredibly intimidating to 'normal people', and they ain't free.

Same problem though. Half of UX is knowing which features to include, and the other half is knowing where to put them.

Intuitive UX for the average non-nerd user is task-based. You start with the most common known goals, like sending someone money, or changing the contrast of a photo, and you put a nice big button or slider somewhere on the screen that either makes the goal happen directly or walks you through it step by step.

Professional tools are workbench-based. You get a huge list of tools scattered around the UI in various groups. Beginners don't know what most of the tools do, so they have to work out what the tools are for before they can start using them. Then, and only then, can they start using the tools in a goal-based way. Professionals already know the tradecraft, so they have the simpler - but still hard - "Which menu item does what I need?" problem.

Developer culture tends to be script-based. It's literally just lists of instructions made of cryptic combinations of words, letters, and weird punctuation characters. Beginners have to learn the words, the concepts behind them, and the associated underlying computer fundamentals at multiple levels - just to get started. And if you start with a goal - let's say you want a bot that posts on social media for you - the amount of learning if you're coming to it cold is beyond overwhelming.

FOSS has never understood this. Yes, in theory you can write your own almost anything and tinker with the source code. But the learning curve for most people is impossibly steep.

AI has some chance of bridging the gap. It's not reliable yet, but it's very obvious now that it has a chance to become a universal UI, creating custom code and control panels for specific personal goals, generating workbench UIs and explaining what the tools do if you need a more professional approach, and explaining core concepts and code structures if you want to work at that level.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#105

Post by lutusp »

ferguess_k wrote: post #55

Although I wish Linux were easier to use -- and there are distros that aim for this, I do agree that FOSS is mostly by nerds for nerds, but it doesn't prevent other people making changes -- which is exactly what the author did. So I'd like to welcome the author to make more apps based on FOSS.

> Although I wish Linux were easier to use [ ... ]

We're getting there. I run Linux Mint with an XFCE desktop -- an intentionally minimal setup. The system performs automatic updates and the desktop layout/experience resembles older Windows desktops before Microsoft began "improving" things. No ads, no AI.

I'm by no means an end user, but in Linux I see incremental progress toward meeting the needs of that audience. And just in time too, now that Microsoft is more aggressively enshittifying Windows.

What's really missing are online fora able to help end users adjust to Linux -- helpful without being superior or condescending. Certainly true for Windows, not yet true for Linux.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#107

Post by a_shovel »

soraminazuki wrote: post #97
andreldm wrote: post #11

If handbrake scares them, don’t you dare to demonstrate how to use ffmpeg. I remember when I used handbrake for the first time and thought “wow, it’s much more convenient than struggling with ffmpeg”.

If you only care about converting media without tweaking anything, ffmpeg offers the simplest UI ever. ffmpeg -i input.avi output.mp4

Proposing a CLI command as a candidate for "simplest UI ever" is a great gag.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#108

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

WD-42 wrote: post #50
zeroq wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> contributors of free software tend to be power users or, simply put, nerds it takes both a different background, approach and skillset to design ux and interface if anything FOSS should figure out how to attract skilled artists so majority of designs and logos doesn't look so blatantly amateurish.

My guess is that, as has always been, the pool of people willing to code for free on their own time because it's fun is just much larger than the people willing to make icons for software projects on their own time because they think it's fun.

Graphic designers and artists get ripped off, all the time; frequently, by nerds, who tend to do so, in a manner that insults the value of the artist's work.

It's difficult to get those kinds of creatives to donate their time (trust me on this, I'm always trying).

I'm an ex-artist, and I'm a nerd. I can definitively say that creating good designs, is at least as difficult as creating good software, but seldom makes the kind of margin that you can, from software, so misappropriation hurts artists a lot more than programmers.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#109

Post by LiquidSky »

SoftTalker wrote: post #69
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good points, but to add to the sources of instability ... a first time user of a piece of software may be very appreciative of its simplicity and "intuitiveness". However, if it is a tool that they spend a lot of time with and is connected to a potentially complex workflow, it won't be long before even they are asking for "this little extra thing". It is hard to overestimate the difference between creating tools for…

Right. For most people, gimp is not only overkill but also overwhelming. It's hard to intuit how to perform even fairly simple tasks. But for someone who needs it it's worth learning. The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting.

But the linked article addresses that. They're not advocating for removing the full-feature UI, they just advise having a simple version that does the one thing (or couple of things) most users want in a simple way. Users who want to do more can just use the full version.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#110

Post by bobbylarrybobby »

andreldm wrote: post #11

If handbrake scares them, don’t you dare to demonstrate how to use ffmpeg. I remember when I used handbrake for the first time and thought “wow, it’s much more convenient than struggling with ffmpeg”.

I actually think ffmpeg’s UI is simpler than Handbrake for those at all acquainted with the command line (i.e., for those who understand the concept of text-is-everything-everything-is-text). Handbrake shows you everything you can possibly fiddle with whether or not you plan on fiddling with it. Meanwhile ffmpeg hides everything, period, and you ask for specific features by typing them out. It's not great for discovery but once you get the hang of it, it is incredibly precise. One could imagine taking someone for whom Handbrake was too much and showing them “look, you just type `ffmpeg -i`, the input file, and the output file, and it does what you want”. I imagine for many people this would be a perfectly lovely interface.
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