Seven deadly excuses for poor design

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Wizards. Some criticism of browsers.

Thanks.

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About Wizards:
Good reasons for one-question-at-a-time:
1. DOS-based programs required one question at a time because the PC could only handle one task. Command-line installers still have this limitation.
2. One question depends on the answer to another question. Many GUIs have difficulty changing what to display based on input.
3. The information needed to collect an answer will take up the majority of the screen. "Office" packages require most of the screen for choosing modules to install.
4. The programmer does not know better or the installation-creation tool cannot do better. Best Practice is always use the minumum number of screens possible to show/collect the information, but many tools suggest/force multiple screens. Using multiple screens to force the user to focus on each question can be counter-productive when the screens keep coming and the users do not know how much more is necessary before there are any results.

Addendum: Always ask all questions before the computer starts doing a task that takes much time. MSWindows installation asks tons of questions, then copies files (and rebooted a few times), then asks more questions. Why not ask all the questions at the beginning so when it is finished, it is really finished? And why didn't it start copying files while asking questions? It could have copied most of the files while I was answering questions.

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Every program I have ever written has had a user-intuitive interface. The programs also seem to survive without much maintenance.
1. My first program sold to computer-literate customers, and never had a support call.
2. My second program was an HR application. I received one support call. At the end of the second year, they had forgotten where to find the end-of-year-report command. I told them to look at the Help, which had about three sentences, but did state how to do that command. It was probably the first time anybody looked at the Help.

I cannot answer your question because every programs I have designed follows the "keep it as simple and easy as possible" philosphy. There have been a few programs where no users were available to check the UI, but my talent (and experience once I had some) is to create easy-to-use UI.

I wish every project involved someone like me.

I had to use MSIE today, and had to find the "Find" command. It is on the menu under Edit.
Mozilla's Find with "type slash" is much easier. Mozilla still needs work: graphics security is good, but it takes 9 clicks and some typing to add a safe domain when it should be a right-click (on the place-holder of a not-displayed graphic) and a click (on "Graphics from this server are safe").

You cannot edit a web page in MSIE, so why is there an "Edit" option on the menu? Ask the Mozilla and Opera developers too. The menu item should be labelled "Copying" and include the "Save" commands. And please put all Preferences on the Global menu, currently named "File". "Open" belongs on the "Go" menu in Mozilla and the "Navigation" menu in Opera; MSIE overloads its few menus too much to offer advice.

Posted by: solprovider   Posted on: 09/02/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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