Complexity and user confusion (was: Red Hat's Bluecurve)

[bscott at ntisys.com]

On 7 Oct 2002, at 2:55pm, pri.nhlug at iadonisi.to wrote:
> ... Apparently, it is a friggin' *stated goal* to remove many
> configuration options from Gnome.  This is supposedly to prevent confusion
> among non-technical users. ... My question is, what pray tell, does having
> more options have to do with confusion?!?!  I mean, if you want to hide
> the options and relegate them to the old way of ... dot-files, then fine.  
> REMOVING the configurability accomplishes nothing but aggravating the
> technical user.

  Several points here:

  First, I agree with you,.  Removing options just for the sake of
dumbing-down the UI is, well, dumb.

  Second: The way to solve this problem (for the end-user) is with what I
(and others) call "User Levels".  Basically, you tell the software what your
experience level is, and it adjusts the UI accordingly.  Newbies get the
least features, more steps and separation, and more prompting.  As the level
of experience increases, so does the density and number of exposed features
(while prompting is decreased).  For best results, there should be a general
user level, and a per-application user level which overrides the general
one.  (That way, e.g., I can turn down the user level of a particular app
while learning it.)

  I have seen user levels implemented in only two places: Once was the
venerable GeoWorks (nee PC/GEOS) GUI for MS-DOS.  The other is in the
"Nautilus" system browser.  I think the industry should take a good look at
these two examples, and learn from them.  They could go a long way toward
equalizing the "easy-to-use vs easy-to-learn divide".

  Lastly: Many corporations do, in fact, consider removing options to be an
advantage.  Why?  It decreases training costs.  More bluntly, it allows them
to reduce qualified personnel and replace them with trained monkeys.  Sure,
it may be uniformly bad, but at least it is uniform (or so their thinking (I
use the term loosely) goes).

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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