Only one correct choice
Posted on November 23, 2006
Filed Under Technology, Software Eng |
Joel on Software | Choices = Headaches
Joel hits the issue of choice right on the head. His case against the too many number of choices that Windows, GNOME, and KDE give the user to do the same task - or variations there of - is a good one. In most cases, there are a million ways to screw something up, but only a few (or one) to do it right. Instead of spending all the effort to give the user 101 ways to shutdown (to use Joel’s example), the effort should be put into ways the design should be done right. The correct way of designing a particular functionality is by making it so intuitive that you can easily figure it out the first time, on your own. Mac OS X gets awefully close with many of those functions (but yes there are still many issues, just google them). That is one of the reasons that so many of the recent users that have “made the swtich” are feel at ease so quickly. The intuitiveness of the OS X design allows them to forget the multitude of intricate, and to many laypeople, arbritrary sequence of clicks to perform a task. The classic is “Click START to shutdown”. START is the opposite of STOP, yet…
It’s about time we start designing correctly, right from the START.
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