Re: [9fans] architectures

[Laura Creighton <lac@cd.chalmers.se>]

my experience with non-techie folks is that once they get over the
conceptual hurdle of actually believing that can use a different
finger than their index finger to point with, they think that
being able to use their machine efficiently to do what they want is
as cool as the rest of us do.

The problem is that naive users are what people design for, because
customers who have never bought your product are by definition naive
users of it.  But naive users have a limited lifetime.  For a few
years I was involved with a project that tried to measure exactly how
limited the lifetime was. We came up with ~3 weeks for most users for
every program we tried to measure.  At this point, they become
frustrated users who want a better interface, or resigned users who
don't believe that there is a better interface because they have only
used computer interfaces designed for the naive.  The big lesson I
learned from this was to teach how to user regular expressions to every
vi user who has been using vi for at least 3 weeks ... but not
before then ... and make their lives a lot happier.  And to cheerfully
and patiently listen to all the complaints of the new users who found the
interface hard to learn, because, after all they deserve the respect
of having their complaints listened to and acknowledged; and then
carefully filing whatever changes they want under `things that they
most likely do will not want to change in about 3 weeks'.

Of course if your interface is truly lousy, the naive uers may quit
before 3 weeks is up.  And if you have botched some detail, the complaints
will continue after the 3 weeks.  But while you must never, ever
treat anybody with such contempt as to reply `you aren't significant
enough to have an opinion' - naive users truly are not significant
enough -- because like butterflies, their life expectancy is measured in
weeks.  Experienced users may also have a list of design defects in
your interface, sometimes because you have botched the interface,
sometimes because they have better vision than you did, and sometimes
because they are using your program to do things that you never do --
what is a problem for them never came up for you.  But it is extremely
rare for them to have the same list of changes as the naive (and an
indication that user interface design may not be what you have any
talent for).  In test after test where we established a user community
of experienced users and then announced that we were going to change
the interface in response to complaints that the interface was hard to
learn we got enormous protests (which we of course saved, that being
the point of this) of the form `when I was learning this, I thought
that XXX sucked too, but now I can't live without it.'

There are some things you cannot teach the technically unsavvy.  For
instance, in 20 years I have never, ever, ever, been able to convince
people that floating point, despite looking like decimal fractions,
ISNT, and that you MUST NEVER USE IT FOR MONEY.  The damn fools listen
politely and then go back to using it, because, after all, they think
they know better than you do.  Moth to the flame.  But I have worked
with 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds, secretaries, hairdressers, and
supermarket-check-out clerks, the most non-technical people we could
hope to find since we advertized for them.  And after they get some
familiarity with vi, I can teach nearly all of them how to use regular
expressions.  And just like the technically savvy, they think that
regular expressions are wonderful.

Laura