This is how I feel every single time I happen to use GIMP while working on rails in fedora, and don't want to reboot into windows and fire up photoshop just to change a transparency. I wonder why open source has often to be synonymy of poor GUI ergonomy.
Dangling by a Trivial Feature
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#12That's why you need settings in your tools. The tool should work efficiently without you ever looking at the settings, but if you need it you should be able to change anything you like. Not sure it applies to consumer interfaces. Ideally it shouldn't. But for tools that you use to do day-to-day work, absolutely.
Not sure what "settings" have to do with this. The point being made in the post is that if trivial, "expected" features are missing, users wont even bother to look further.
Everybody has different expectations. For example, maybe you don't care about rect size but what you care about is the rect sides ratio. So obviously you want the status line to display the ratio and it isn't there.
Or maybe you care about rect's area! And the status line doesn't display area either. You can't have all that: it won't fit and it would look like crap. So you need settings.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#13As someone who sells software online, the most horrifying thing about this scenario is that the user is very unlikely to ever tell me why they moved on, and so I'm terrifyingly unlikely to ever know that this trivial feature is missing. This literally keeps me awake at night. Statistic: it takes roughly 200 non-converting free trial downloads of my software to get one data point of feedback telling me why they decide…
Do users have to sign up to something in some way to give you feedback? Are you jacking their attention with a web page pop-up at uninstall time?
If a user is already unhappy about dealing with you (safe to assume, since they're uninstalling your product. Fair to say?). It might be worth filtering whatever trolling you'd receive from such a feedback mechanism if it's that important to you.
As a personal interest of mine, what part of that 200 non converting trial downloads used the program up to expiry vs opened once?
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#14Any implementation must accept that you will lose users this way. You can't implement every 'trivial' feature possible in order to avoid shedding users; implementing one way precludes a different way that also sheds users. Overall, you try to maximize the number of users that you don't shed, but that's it. And in fact, you're frequently better off shedding users willy-nilly, iteratively finding what the core features are that build a userbase, and forgetting about all the rest.
This post is a prescription for paralytic featur-itis.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
Settings are for microwaves. Computer-based tools should be reprogrammable. Still, the tool should be easy to configure for the 80% case.
Settings on a microwave are, I think, a terrible example. Most microwaves I've used are horribly over-encumbered. I expect two dials on any microwave I use: Time, Power. Maybe a control to set the time, if it has a clock. I don't disagree with your general point about tools being able to be reprogrammed, though. One of the reasons I loved Autocad as a tool is the Lisp interpreter that allows you to script and extend…
Autocad has a very interesting GUI concept, not in that it's programmable (VBA existed in CorelDraw for years), in its dialogue mode: you click a circle, and it asks you of a center; you either click or type coordinates. Sadly, this mode is rare in non-CAD systems.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#16It's very simple. In any environment, the person who asks, "Why would a user want to do that?" is the one who should be fired first.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#17This is why we should be using small, focused, interoperable modules instead of large monolithic frameworks and applications that try to do everything.
A plugin architecture format shared by applications would be invaluable and solve this problem.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#18It's very simple. In any environment, the person who asks, "Why would a user want to do that?" is the one who should be fired first.
I disagree. Understanding how users use your software and what they are trying to accomplish with it is important, and it is not always obvious why a user is asking for a particular feature without asking. Furthermore, when you learn what the user is trying to accomplish with the feature they are asking for you may realize that there is a better way of providing that functionality rather than the specific approach the user requested.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Settings on a microwave are, I think, a terrible example. Most microwaves I've used are horribly over-encumbered. I expect two dials on any microwave I use: Time, Power. Maybe a control to set the time, if it has a clock. I don't disagree with your general point about tools being able to be reprogrammed, though. One of the reasons I loved Autocad as a tool is the Lisp interpreter that allows you to script and extend…
Autocad has a very interesting GUI concept, not in that it's programmable (VBA existed in CorelDraw for years), in its dialogue mode: you click a circle, and it asks you of a center; you either click or type coordinates. Sadly, this mode is rare in non-CAD systems.
Solidworks used to work like that too, it's a delight to just start a line and keep on typing distance deltas in numbers and see stuff emerging without a single mouse movement.
Re: Dangling by a Trivial Feature
#20It's very simple. In any environment, the person who asks, "Why would a user want to do that?" is the one who should be fired first.
I disagree. Understanding how users use your software and what they are trying to accomplish with it is important, and it is not always obvious why a user is asking for a particular feature without asking. Furthermore, when you learn what the user is trying to accomplish with the feature they are asking for you may realize that there is a better way of providing that functionality rather than the specific approach th…
I think the two of you are mostly in agreement. I believe mikecane is talking about someone that believes their mental model of users' needs, desires, and expectations is complete, and is using the question as a way to shut down a feature, with the implication being "if the reason someone might want X is not immediately obvious to me, it must not exist."
I don't think he was talking about someone that acknowledges that their understanding of users is incomplete and wants to learn more.