I suppose most everyone who has ever used a computer will remember the awkwardness of first contact. It’s not so much the complexity as it is the obscurity. The words on the ribbon display appear to be in English, but their meaning is often not the meaning you expected. For example: I still have no idea what is meant by a Selection Plane. I know I can use it to display, “Objects”. Then I can select, list, or change, these objects. What objects, I wonder? Tapping help doesn’t help. Help is explained in mysterious jargon, and cryptic acronyms. Many of these can eventually be deciphered, but only laboriously. Why not just explain the function in plain English? There’s plenty of room on the screen.
For example, when I use the email program one third of the screen is taken up by a pointless scenic photo. Another third lists choice of new, inbox, etc., leaving only the remaining third for typing. This seems to me to be an unnecessarily wasteful use of space. How about no photo, a one-inch vertical strip for choices, and the rest of the screen for comfortable typing? So on, and so on…
My complaints about the stupidity of computer interfaces is usually dismissed as just the crankiness of a computer illiterate. “Get a class somewhere”, they say. “You’ll get used to it”. All of which misses my point.
I am getting used to it.
I shouldn’t have to get used to it. Neither should anyone else. There is no technical reason for stupid computer interfaces. Thoughtful design could easily make every computer command comfortably intuitive.
I have spent my entire career as a Designer of communication materials: Books, Ads, Album Covers, Presentation Packages, and Corporate Logos. I understand design as the means by which purpose is made clear, and disorder is made orderly.
If anyone I ever hired had come up with today’s typical computer interface, I would have fired that person for terminal incompetence.
Yet, like sheep, few complain. Those that do complain are quickly shut down by those who have swallowed the lie that technological complexity requires the current confusing mess.
It’s not true.
Consider the cell phones now marketed to old folks. They are capable of all the everyday tasks done by any i-Phone. They are intuitively easy to use. True, they are not capable of doing all the things that i-Phones can do. But, that’s entirely because old folk customers have no interest in doing those things. If old folks were interested in all those bells & whistles - and if there were enough old folks to buy them - or, better yet - if all customers demanded simple intuitive design, then no one would buy the devices with stupid interfaces. It’s a marketing opportunity for some prescient entrepreneur.
Why bother with sensible design? Aren’t the companies already selling nearly more devices than they can manufacture? Yes, they are, but complacency has never been the hallmark of a healthy free-market economy.
If someone - out there somewhere - designed a clear, direct, intuitive interface they could license it to the companies that haven’t bothered to do so, thereby enabling those companies to capture the considerable share of the market that will do without before buying a marginally useful machine that annoys them.
