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By Krishna, January 13, 2010

Phil Haack writes about the lack of confirmation dialogs when deleting an item in the Netflix queue.

I have noticed something similar on the Amazon wish lists. It avoids an unnecessary click, but at the same time, allows you to quickly undo the action if you had accidentally clicked the first time.

This reminds me of one of my pet peeves: people who complain about the Delete confirmation dialog box for files. Generally, the person who makes this complaint “cannot imagine” how stupid the operating system architects and developers are there. The user wants to delete something. You have a Recycle Bin. Why doesn’t the operating system just get out of the way? And who reads the dialog box anyway? One complainer suggested that this was just a way for the developer to shift responsibility onto the user. Since the user clicked Yes, the programmer is no longer responsible if the user accidentally made a mistake. And the implication is that the programmer is lazier and needs to own the responsibility. Or something of the sort.

Obviously, I have no idea what the intention of the programmers were. But let’s assume that there was no confirmation dialog box and the second you clicked Delete, the file is deleted. That is great if you meant to hit the Delete key. But what if you had meant to hit the “End” key (to navigate to the end of a list of files) and your stubby finger pressed down both the Delete and End key. What would probably happen is that the currently selected file gets deleted, you navigate to the end of the file list and you don’t realize that your file has just been zapped.

But what about the Trash can, you say? The problem is that if you don’t know the file has been deleted, you may not bother to check its contents before emptying it, especially if you had been deleting other files. You may not even realize the mistake until days or weeks have passed and then even a disk recovery service may not be able to help you.

I elaborate on this seemingly minor issue because although user interface issues are more complex than they seem at first glance, because they don’t seem so complex, everyone has an opinion. Even those who have no clue about user interaction or the design choices that made a choice necessary, even if it was not the most optimal. This was best illustrated by a recent comic “How a Web Design Goes Straight to Hell” by Oatmeal Comics. As the author notes,

I actually had a client include their mother in the design process so that she could provide feedback and criticism. [...] You are no longer a web designer. You are now a mouse cursor inside a graphics program which the client can control by speaking, emailing and instant messaging.

It is a tough world out there for user interface and user interaction designers.

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By Krishna, October 4, 2009

There are some books (“Peopleware“, “The Innovator’s Dilemma“, “The Halo Effect“)  that you want to hug and never let go. And then there are others that you want to tear apart and dance on its fragments. Alan Cooper’s “The Inmates are Running the Asylum” belongs strongly to the second category.

But first some meta: I am actually a huge fan of Cooper’s “About Face 3“, a great book about user interface and interaction design. Alan Cooper was behind the initial release of Visual Basic and then turned his attention towards interaction design. His company, Cooper Interaction Design, has done work for many of the top technology companies in the United States. Naturally, I expected this book to be a good resource.

Unfortunately, “The Inmates” has more in common with a political screed than a software book. It has some of the most hateful language about programmers that I have ever read. Even the good portions of the book are marked by scorn and viciousness towards software developers who the author blames for all the usability problems created by software.

Cooper devotes 7 (yes, SEVEN!) chapters to explaining why programmers are the scum of the earth. You would think the material gets thinner as he goes, but actually he manages to thicken the abuse culminating in the most mind-blowing and asinine analysis of programmer psychology ever:

[Programmers Act Like Jocks]

The jocks, who were so powerful in high school, find themselves utterly at the mercy of their former victims [ed: nerds]. The humbling process of becoming an adult makes most jocks become decent humans [...] the 5-foot 7-inch former Astronomy Club treasurer finds his mental prowess allows him to weave and jab and punch with unmatched agility. [...]

[T]hey see nothing wrong with humiliating users with dauntingly complex products. They sneer, joke and laugh about the “lusers” who simply are not smart enough to use computers.

All of this vitriol and what for? Apparently, Cooper wants to make the point that programmers practically hold the strings of the software development process in companies, even though executives and product managers are supposedly in charge. Programmers oppose software design. So executives have to put their foot down, grant great power to interaction designers and absolve programmers of any responsibility for the success or failure of the project.

There is a distinct conflict of interest here given that Cooper runs an interaction design firm. A more sincere approach would be to explain how someone could learn interaction design (“About Face” did a better job of this). But Cooper mostly promotes the theory that programmers are genetically incapable of doing that, going so far to call them “Homo logicus” as opposed to “Homo sapiens”. And he doesn’t mean that as a compliment.

There are times in the book where Cooper discusses why many software products have poor usability, but instead of taking his analysis to proper conclusions, he reverts back to his main thesis that programmers are to blame. He fails to look at processes, individual capabilities, knowledge, awareness, experience, incentives and other aspects of software development that contribute to poor products.

Finally, keeping in the spirit of the book, he takes a Goebbelsian preemptive strike at critics by calling them “apologists”. Incredible and despicable!