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Free software scares normal people

danieldelaney.net

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Re: Free software scares normal people

#111

Post by Cotterzz »

DrewADesign wrote: post #40
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.

I have been beating this drum for many years. There are some big cultural rifts and workflow difficulties. Unless FOSS products are run by project managers rather than either developers or designers, it’s a tough nut. Last I looked, gimp has been really tackling this effort more aggressively than most.

gimp has been my goto when I want to explain bad ui, developer designed ui, or just typical foss ui I'm glad they're fixing it. It's also my image editor of choice.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#114

Post by Cotterzz »

squeedles wrote: post #10

Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one. Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I j…

It does shed light on a possibly better solution though that gives the user a list of simple, common use case options or access to the full interface.

I do feel quite strongly that this should be implemented in the app though.

There must be examples of this approach already being used?

Re: Free software scares normal people

#116

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

a_shovel wrote: post #107
soraminazuki wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Come on. "type ffmpeg, then hyphen i then the input filename then the output filename". I would've understood this when I was 8. Because I was super smart? No, because I was making a genuine effort.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#118

Post by Cotterzz »

This is useful for everyone not just non-techy types. I can't help but compare this to sites like shadertoy that let you develop with a simple coding interface on one half the screen and the output on the other (as opposed to the regular complexity of setting up and using a dev environment) Code goes here>{} , Press this button>[] , Output here>() , Which I think we need more of if we want to get kids into coding.

Re: Free software scares normal people

#119

Post by 8note »

zeroq wrote: post #32
dayvid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contributors of free software tend to be power users who want to ensure their use case works. I don't think they're investing a lot of thought into the 80/20 use case for normal/majority or users or would risk hurting their workflow to make it easier for others

> 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.

UX and interface designers are also nerds.

i think the bigger issue is that the power users usecases are different from the non-power users. not a skillset problem, but an incentive one

Re: Free software scares normal people

#120

Post by singhrac »

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…

One summer in middle school our family computer failed. We bought a new motherboard from Microcenter but it didn’t come with a Windows license, so I proposed we just try Ubuntu for a while.

My mom had no trouble adjusting to it. It was all just computer to her in some ways.

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