Kelly McNeill from OSOpinion writes: “A few weeks ago, I wrote an editorial detailing the importance of a well-designed user interface (UI) and the need to keep that interface consistent. Unfortunately, my article was incredibly misunderstood by nearly all those who read it. To help clarify the issues surrounding this choice, I contacted Jef Raskin, arguably the leading authority on user interface design and author of the highly acclaimed user interface book, “The Humane Interface.” What
follows is an interview I conducted with the interface expert to help clarify the issue of consistency vs. skins.”
UI Expert Jef Raskin Talks Skins with OSOpinion
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
That brings up a second problem. When you move from one system to another that is the same in name but in fact has been customized
As long as change the skin is not hard, why is this a problem?
OK, with Linux this can be a bugger, but if it was a simple window, with a list of themes? And one un-uninstallable, well designed default theme.
You lose some consistency with any interface change
This is a matter of how well the skinning is done, and how well the apps use the skins, if the skinning interface includes a number of abstract functions (such as “DrawBox”, “UI_COLOUR”, a lot of time & effort would be needed to create the right balance, but doable) then apps are able to look and feel like the rest of the system.
They waste the time of the user in changing them.
Good point on a Work Desktop, on my home computer surely I have the right to “waste” my time making it feel like my computer, not some UI Expert’s.
I remember one client of … colors.
So your argument against themes is not “I’m a bastard”.
Yes Themable OS’s should have a safe mode, for stupid users &, well, bastards.
mlk
Please, if you’re a linux weenie do not even try to undersand these issues, you’ll only get frustrated at the fact that X11 will never ever be sorted out.
Recently I was amazed to find out that the URL field in Mozilla for X11 behaves more like a mac text field than a typical X11 app. 99.9999% of X11 apps follow the Microsoft Windows convention when dragging up or down does not move the selection to the beginning or end of the line respectively. The I reminded myself that it was appropriate that Mozilla X11 ignore how 99.999% of X11 applications behave and just invent its own behavior.
Who the hell is going to bring order to such chaos? I’ll tell you who: NOBODY!
That’s their real name.
Always a pleasure to read about Jef Raskin anyway. The original, not Kelly McNeill’s impersonations.
<<We design systems to not have security holes (well, we try), and we put in other limitations to keep the system working as the expert designers think it should. Interface design is no different.>>
They designed systems not to have floppy disks.
“Interface design is no difference”, so what? Jef Raskin is too intelligent for those horrible syllogisms, I’m still wondering what makes him talk like that. I guess it’s an obsession the man has, the `interface science`. Thanks God he is not designing my keyboard, ’cause I’m not using the so called superior DVORAK.
That X is chaos is not a discovery. The opinionated fact Eazel made an undisciplinated interface, is a low strike that doesn’t prove his weird science of the unchangeability.
<<To customize is to introduce change…Of course, there are no really well-designed interfaces out there good enough to prove the point that you don’t need preferences.>>
What we certainly don’t need are need scientists, try with rats. Euclid’s geometry was demonstrated to be better that the legion of his modern rivals. Raskin needs a more logical case for his.
I may lose productivity by moving from my skinned desktop to a friend’s computer .. but I can tell you I lost more productivity reading this article than twenty years of moving between skinned desktops would have cost me.
X and Mozilla are BAD (very very bad) examples of theming, hell one (X) is not even a theming product, but instead a system with no UI rules.
Please, use a good theming engine before passing judgment!
I get the feeling that people here have read the article, and still don’t understand the importance of it.
The article is not merely about skinning, and theme support in an OS. The real subtext that needs to be discussed is the fact that every operating system out there, (including my beloved BeOS) has interface design flaws, and what we as humans are doing to them is adapting THEM to our own weird needs.
By this, I mean we are putting our own physical worldview into the virtual wokscape which we call an operating system. Keyword: operating. It’s not just for running little programs or playing the latest mp3. It’s for getting work done.
The original motivating factor that started off the entire computing industry was to get work done. It is no wonder that the Macintosh platform, given it’s wonderful asthetics and “interface”, makes working on it a charm.
Contrast that to Linux, Windows, and even BeOS, where the interface is nowhere as near finished, and just “feels” wrong, it’s no wonder we decide to customize it ourselves, and waste time playing with preferences and choices instead of doing actual work. The x86 platform is most famous for these days as being the gaming platform. Fine, I’m ok with that, but I think it’s time we took a hard look at the OS’s we use, and decide on a way to make it more productive too.
That, my fellow readers, is what I perceive as the real meaning of the article. Let’s stop wasting time with the little things, and focus on the road ahead, where forthcoming technologies like 3D interfaces will make even what I’m saying here today a moot point.
Thanks for your time, I look forward to questions and comments, and have my flameproof suit at the ready.
-Chris Simmons,
Avid BeOS User.
[email protected]
i think that my desktop is kind of a home to me, while i do my daily chores. and, much kudos to jef, but he’s saying that i work better when my “home” is consistent across all computers.
if this was your REAL home that would be the equivalent of communism! everyone has to be the same so we can assign you different resources and you cant tell.
i’m all for consistency between applications, but i think i should be able to change the layout engine AND the colours of all the widgets… like i can choose where my seat is w.r.t. the TV
People, don’t buy “The Humane Interface”. There’s nothing in there that you don’t already know, and many of Raskins arguments are based on outdated concepts. He keeps on babbling about how other users of your computer will get confused because of your skinnable stuff. Or how about this quote: <blockquote>In our group’s machines, I strongly encourage everybody to leave all the settings at the default, or if somebody makes a strong case (strong does not mean “I like it”) for a particular change, we all make it. That way we can move from machine to machine without going berserk or even feeling a little ill at ease.</blockquote>
This, of course, is because the use dumb, single-user systems w/o logins. At university, I could sit down at any Xterminal, log in, and never even know what window manager its previous user used. Bad implementations of ideas should not be used to judge the idea.
Also, he keeps on talking about percieved user interface ease-of-use versus measured performance. I find that scary. You may lose a millisecond here or there, but I would say that perception is way more important than real speed. After all, we are not production line assembly workers.
What’s next, we all have to wear the same uniform and listen to the same music in our exactly equal cubicles, because God forbid, we might become “confused” and be 0.63% less productive!
While I’m no fan of ‘skins’, I’ve never understood why Jef Raskin became the #1 ‘expert’ in this field. Many of his ideas sound less productive to me, yet his argument is always that he can somehow “prove” he’s right because he’s an ‘expert’. The Mac interface has *always* been pretty confusing to me, as well as extremely unresponsive compared to something like AmigaOS or BeOS, so I don’t get why he’s considered the big know-it-all on this stuff.
He doesn’t seem to understand that different people work differently and have different preferences; plus, they don’t necessarily give a shit about being 0.1% quicker in clicking on a button every time (“but being 0.1% slower on every button click will amount to x days lost per decade!” — good, at least I’m getting my work done the way *I* like!). Checking millisecond timing of a sample of people performing tasks in different ways simply shows an average result for those people. Suddenly, this can be applied to everyone in the whole world, and anyone who disagrees is a moron!
Now I’m going to click on “Submit comment”, but I don’t know if I’ll manage it, because it’s not stuck to the edge of the screen and rendered 400 pixels high…
As a web applications designer/programmer, UI efficiency, consistency, and elegance are things I consider on a daily basis.
My opinion on this whole issue is that there is not just one, single efficient way to do things. UI development hinges very much on the target audience, the user of said interface. I think it is utter nonsense to say that there can be one perfect UI. Depending on each application, the UIs looks and actions will change accordingly. My biggest concern is not necessarily with looks, but rather the logical sequence/consequnces of user actions. In other words, when I push the button in the upper right corner, the window will close…it doesn’t matter if the button looks like a little gumdrop or an arrow, or a picture of a fish. As long as the users know that that action on their part will close a window, then no matter what it looks like, you have achieved a certain level of consistency.
Ultimately, it comes down to choice. Productivity will defintely decrease if a user is denied a choice, and in a home environment, productivity doesn’t even matter…it’s your computer, you do whatever you think you should to it.
Sander Stoks mentions that a lot of the ideas Raskin bases his arguments on are outdated. I agree completely. In most workplce environments, where productivity is job #1, single-user sytems are out of place. It would be much more efficient to use multi-user sytems, as they can provide consinstency accross machines on an individual basis, or accross the entire workplace if so desired. Since it is “work”, the ultimate decision at that point is left to the people who run the show and give you money.
Ok, that’s it…I’m done.
Let me propose some broad assumptions based purely on my subjective observations. This of course is not meant to be a comprehensive list. Objective criticism welcome
People by nature love to customize things. Be it there home, car, boat, garden, entertainment system, Desktop, etc….
Potential reason 1:
For aesthetic reasons but more likely it’s to reinforce their claim of ownership. This generally has nothing to do to with productivity other than to remove the clinical or generic quality of the tool/object in question and hence make them “feel more at home” and in control(Master of their domain).
Potential reason 2:
During the process of workingusing the operator will recognise sequences of actions that they regularly go through to complete common tasks. The ability to construct a method of condensing these sequences into single actions (i.e. macros) increases their productivity on the computer they are installed on. Removing the option to customize the environment quickly become anti-productive when proficiency increases .
Potential reason 3:
Disability/Accessibility.
(e.g) an interface that presumes a keyboard or mouse input device maybe ineffective for someone requiring voice control. Well there is no getting around it. Either you use a specialized OS/GUI that may set you apart from others with respect to available applications or you allow customization.
Potential reason 4:
…. Well I’m sure there are plenty more valid points but the above are enough to let me make a point.
My take on the above points started to become an essay so I’ll wait for some feedback before elaborating. Personally I think skins represent mostly FUN value and have the feel of a hack rather than actually making a major improvement to the GUI.
If you look at UI design, the majority of individual widget themes crop up regardless whether the UI is themed or not. Things like text boxes, menus, drop-down lists, tool bars, etc.
While the operation of each of these widgets may be different from implementation to implementation, their use is generally intuitive and differences are easily incorporated into a person’s work habits.
So-called themes or skins usually just change the appearance of UI widgets, not their basic operation.
Now looking at the UI of an application or operating system as a whole there are lots of inconsistencies and things that could be fixed, especially in X11 based apps; I believe that this is actually getting better, though, because most people now write programs with toolkits instead of directly to the X11 interface (or lack thereof).
I am actually in favor of choice, but I think there should be a standard set of rules governing how individual widgets should work, and guideline suggestions on how a UI as a whole should be designed. But keep skinning/customization.
But since kelly mc neil and jef raskin didn’t change their argumentation, i see that everyone here doesnt agree either.
How can some1 buy his blahblah about productivity ?
I designed my whole UI, shell and window manager (windowblinds and litestep), and i’m 100% more productive with it than with standard windows.
Again: productivity is only a concern in business environement, so i’d ask jef raskin to stay away from my home computer. And if for any reason my boss would try to enforce a UI at work, thats fine, but i’ll certainly lose the enhancements i like, and being pissed doesnt bring productivity.
I can remember a firm where the “consistency” included wallpapers. Of course, they were chosen by the marketing departement. After a few days, i just brought my own laptop at work, i couldnt stand it anymore. Used floppies to transfer files from laptop to work PC, and worked on my home machine.
Yes, i lost a lot of productivity here. Because i couldnt stand their fscking unique wallpaper. No kidding!
I haven’t read Mr. Raskin’s work, but I was dissapointed with what he had to say here. He really didn’t prove his point.
To say customization is bad because you could introduce a desktop picture that resembles open windows, or choose a font which is the same color as the background is silly.
Why would anyone do this?
He also proposes that productivity increases could be achieved with a consistent interface. I agree. My productivity could be increased if I experienced the same interface every time I sat down at a computer.
However, to suggest that everybody use the same consistent interface is silly. People interact and learn differently. There is no universal intuitive interface.
Instinct alone does not provide us with enough skill to interact with interfaces. Language, for example, is an interface between people. You need to learn to talk. It would therefore seem that your ability to understand and use an interface is almost entirely dependent on your life experience. An interface which proves effective and intuitive for me could appear cumbersome and difficult for some who has lived a very different life in a different country with different parents and a different career.
The office metaphor is certainly outdated. When computers were used as business machines it made sense. Business people in offices intuitively understood the interface. Today, computers are incredibly versatile devices and certainly not restricted to business. Why do some designers cling to the office metaphor?
Customization is essential. We need to be able to alter our personal interface to suit our life experience and our own capacity for interaction.
In the future, I hope it is much different. I hope that computers will become sufficiently intelligent that they can learn from our interaction and adapt the interface to each individual. This type of interface would know I like the color blue because I use it consistently, and it would know to increase the size of text automatically as I age because I keep zooming in on documents. It would create keyboard or onscreen shortcuts for me because it knows how I work.
I also hope that the interface and the OS are completely disconnected. It would be most efficient if I could log on to any computer, regardless of hardware or software platform, and access the same interface which has been cultivated for me throughtout my whole life.
A completely portable, constantly self-customizing interface. It can’t be that far off. The technology to support it seems to exist.
Rob
He’s right about a lot of what he says, and you people can’t seem to see the big picture here.
I think that ‘before’ one should even think about the idea of skinning apps they should have a consistent UI in place to BEGIN WITH. Linux/BSD/X Has NOT achieved this yet.
You see this is the problem, and it’s even more of a problem to new computer users. Developers take it upon themselves to invent all new UI designs and the result is chaos. It’s like letting 25 colour-blind people paint a house. The result resembles that of an acid trip to the circus.
Let me be so bold as to suggest a comprimise.
1. Every App ‘must’ have a standard UI to begin with.
2. The standard UI is default until otherwise changed.
3. Customisation is allowed however there must be an easy universal method to set everything back to the standard UI.
There, problem solved.
robcj said:
>The office metaphor is certainly outdated. When computers were used as business machines it made sense. Business people in offices intuitively understood the interface. Today, computers are incredibly versatile devices and certainly not restricted to business. Why do some designers cling to the office metaphor?
The so-called office metaphor wasn’t really an office metaphor. User interfaces abstracted computer files and actions into objects that people could manipulate. Files became icons to move from one place to another, they opened up the correct tool to work on themselves. Commands became menus and buttons with names written on them so people didn’t have to memorize which actions could be performed. Text boxes and lists made entering and selecting specific information easier. The mouse made navigating these structures intuitive, but keyboard shortcuts still existed to allow things to scale up for speed and efficiency.
The metaphor broke down at a really shallow level, and I don’t really think that it had anything to do with using computers for business. Skins and themes don’t change the underlying methods that users currently use to interact with computers. We still use what works until something better comes along.
But you are right that no matter what a certain amount of learning is required to use any interface.
With all due respect, Sander, there’s a lot in <em>The Humane Interface</em> that you probably <em>don’t</em> know. The book describes a UI concept that’s fully graphic (to the degree that it’s only been in the last couple of years that processors and graphics systems could do them well) yet windowless and largely menuless. It’s a difficult concept to wrap your head around, and Raskin isn’t exaggerating when he says that it takes a book to describe it.
The fascinating paradox is that it takes a book because his audience has two decades of windows and desktops to unlearn (which he’s partially responsible for). Someone actually sitting down in front of his interface for the first time would probably pick it up at least as fast as a standard GUI.
And, it’s important to note that when you throw out the conventions we follow now–documents and applications mixed together and organized by physical location on the hard drive, presented in windows which map to subfolders, and an “application-centric” UI operated through menus attached to the application–the concept of skins simply goes away. That doesn’t mean the concept of <em>individuality</em> goes away; if anything, the system of spatial organization his interface provides means that everyone’s computer “world” will be even <em>more</em> individualized, just in the way that everyone’s living rooms are unique. The consistency he harps on comes from the operating conventions. Your friend might store documents in a different place in her computer’s world, but you can view and edit those documents in the same way on different machines using the same paradigm.
Cars don’t allow steering wheels to be easily replaced with reins. I can’t easily replace the volume knob on my stereo system with a set of fixed resistors that I switch in and out to change volume. On the flip side, a lot of people I know prefer volume knobs to push buttons. As others have tried to point out, flexibility seems like an advantage when the “inflexible” interface you’re stuck with isn’t very well-designed; when that interface works intuitively and quickly, you don’t want to change it. At most you might want to personalize it (cover the steering wheel with leather, tiger stripes or another fabric of your choice).
The customizability of, say, Macintosh System 7 “out of the box” is a good compromise. You can change background images, some system colors, event sounds and fonts, but the interface’s <em>elements</em> are always the same and instantly recognizable. I miss that ability in OS X. Raskin might point out that even System 7’s flexibility allows a user to degrade a system’s usability, but, well. It struck a good balance between trying to stop users from shooting themselves in the kneecaps and having a “my way or the highway” approach. Again, the idea is that you don’t <em>change</em> the user interface elements, but you can <em>personalize</em> them.
<em>The Humane Interface</em> is really quite worth reading if you’re seriously interested in user interface design. It’s made me consider finally getting a degree in something: human/machine interaction.
That should be <em>Sanders</em> at the beginning.
Eugenia, has anyone else suggested that maybe OSNews could use s “preview” button for these comments?
I think, that they may have a point that if everyone’s user interface was common, people may work more productively on other machines, but for someone using only one machine most of the time, it makes far more sense to have a UI customized to the person using it. The way my desktop is set up, if you’ve only used windows or a mac before, it’s going to take you an hour to even learn how to browse a site, I on the other hand am very used to it, and can do things far faster in my environment that in any other. Also, UIs are far from perfect right now…many people hate working in a mac UI or a Windows UI or in my set up, so rather than productivity on foregin machines being low, productivity on home machines would be low too. Another point that I’d like to bring up is that windows takes far more of the market than any other OS on the desktop, so for all you people on foreign environments that love the idea of a common UI, for your desktop to become common, you’d be using the windows UI. I think a lot of mac people don’t consider this, they shoot down X, and say everyone should move to aqua, without considering the interface they use is far from common. I think a lot of reason the majority of mac people are in this field, is because in OSX, from what I understand, you can’t skin by default, and I’m sure this is the reason that OSopinion had this article up in the firstplace.
an user interface is how you as a person are able to interact with something.
with modern OSs it’s the GUI….as you all know.
If a certain GUI is designed welll enough then it will be intuitive for the user to use.
Like BeOS R5 for example…..the scroll bars ave an up AND down arrow at both ends of the scroll bar….instead of having to move the mouse all the way up to the top or having grab the bar and scroll. Intuitive. Well thought out.
A GUI should not necessarily be skinnable, but if it is then fine. A previous post on here said all apps should conform to the same look and feel. Well that’s fine for the business world….but what about things like Sonique and GrooveMaker??
They have a very nice looking UI which is waaaaay different, but it is still easy to use because they are intuitive.
You could argue that they are using skins on top of the Windows GUI API but even so my argument is that if you spend all your time on an OS on which you are constantly trying to figure out how to do things then that OS UI is poorly designed.
peter
While I have to agree 100% with the revolting inconsistency in *nix’s X Window System (I swear I am the only one that knows the proper name… it is NOT “X Windows”)… I have to argue that most of the problem with computing today is not really the GUI any more. The problem is the behavior, not the appearance. I certainly find most user interfaces to be less than they should be, but the real problem is that software and hardware do not do the things users want them to do and expect them to do. Bugs, crashes, slowness, boot-processes, unportable data, etc… and the really sad thing is that users are made to believe “this is how computers are” and it does nothing to solve the problem. There are tons of human beings out there with great brains that think they are the problem. No. the computer is the problem. Sadly, the people who are closest to the technology and should have the most effect upon it are so blinded by their own exposure to it. They do not see the problems. Sometimes they are glad to have the problems (“why do I want to make the computer actually work? I’d lose my job, man!!”) and contribute to the complete lack of interest in solutions.
Oh, and the answer is not 3D interfaces.
The answer is to take computers of today, hand them to “clueless lusers” and ask them to tell US what the hell is wrong with the computers and how they should work. Then the computers of tomorrow can be created with usability in mind, not just buzzwords and skinning.
Oh, and the answer to long boot times is not “resume mode.”
I could go on for hours on this topic, but it wouldn’t help anything…
MS and Apple have whole departments dedicated to sitting down with end-users and figuring out what works and what doesn’t in their GUIs. I would have to suggest that Windows and MacOS (and probably OS X) are designed pretty much the way that their usability analysis as dictated by extensive end-user testing tells them to.
I never hear everyday end-users complain about how the current mainstream GUIs work. They seem to be quite satisfied with them. However, in the world of navigating web-pages, I think it’s a different story. There are lots of unintuitive and badly designed websites out there.
My $0.02: Steve Jobs is being really obnoxious by discouraging skinning of OS X (I don’t think it even has the capability built-in – any skinning would be a hack). He seems dictatorial in various ways and I don’t like his ‘take what we give you and shut-up’ attitude. Microsoft at one point had Stardock Windowblinds (a popular skinning program) available for download from its official Windows XP beta-tester site – how about that.
In Microsoft’s Windows XP system policy editor, there is a new setting for “use alternative shell”, which means that the capability is built in for admins to do extensive rollouts of the OS with any alternative shell that they might want to use as the default instead of explorer. I saw this tip at the LiteStep website.
I really don’t think mac os 9 or X have “good” interfaces. In fact, I think Windows is better because programs are in “windows”. I thought that was the whole point…
X is eye candy. “Get work done”? Excuse me, but sounds more like, “lets sell this to kids and schools and dumb teachers!!”.
Well, not to say Windows is flawless, but I think everyone is on the same boat at the moment.
Haha, actually you spelled my name right. It’s not “sanders” – that’s just my email address, although all of the English-speaking world seems to insist on calling me “Sanders”.
To reply to your post though, I actually have the book, and I thoroughly regret having bought it. Perhaps his ideas are worth a paper instead of just a posting, but certainly not an entire book. He has a point and I’m not saying he hasn’t, but it could have been summarized in 1/10th the paper. Also, his style is annoying to me.
In fact, let me define a quantity which I will call “Sander Stoks’ measure of annoyancy” which is directly proportional to the number of trivial quantities mentioned in a paper, baring the author’s name, given to it by the author himself. Raskin scores very high on Sander Stoks’ measure of annoyancy, which is a measure that I, Sander Stoks, have discovered and defined, all by myself, which is very smart, and which nobody else has ever thought of, because they are not experts in the field of measures of annoyancy. (Readers of Raskin will probably recognize this style.)