tinypliny - 08/07/11 20:05
I am glad you wrote that bit about "essential complexity". It translated SO WELL to what I was wondering about. The challenge now is to determine where the essential complexity lies. I am very unsure of whether I understand if I am capable enough of assigning this complexity.

I am constantly worried that I might expand on relatively simple things and gloss over complex things that really require more detailed analyses, thought and interpretation. It is directly related to the question, what is my central concern and objective when I look at this data? Am I presenting enough objective details to let my audience reach their own conclusions without relying too much on what are "known" facts or their intuitions (all of us make intuitive judgments about associations in data especially in medicine, for eg. oh, smoking must be always associated with everything bad. Oh, fat is always the worst part of the diet. etc. etc.) So the concept essential complexity comes in when you force people to take that extra effort to look at data in a different way and possibly take away some more clarity and objectivity in how they think about associations. That is the job of a well-oriented epidemiologist.

I don't know if I am there yet. So I find your insight fascinating and extremely pertinent.

jim - 08/07/11 19:53
Ah, I'm laughing at myself for reading so much of my own obsession into what you were describing that I made so many assumptions :)

tinypliny - 08/07/11 19:32
Wow. that was amazing! Thanks. :) Believe it or not, I was not thinking about UIs at all. I was thinking about how best to present my findings at tomorrow's meeting with my advisor! I was thinking should I go all graphical or pages and pages of numerical data. I think I am shifting more and more towards a graphical view with numbers for only the nastier details.

I actually do agree with you a lot. The essential aim of any design should be getting out of the way and letting the use concentrate easily on the job at hand and getting it done rather that worrying about how it is going to be done and wasting time by tweaking the workflow of that job. your analogy of the rock as a unintuitive hammer is spot on. I think I might use that someday (and thank you in my mind!) :)

I want to come back and read that many times more to pick on more details. On the whole I think this is where Linux is faaar behind Macs or even windows. It's not user-friendly and makes you think TOO much about the mechanics and less about getting stuff done - at least in my case, as you probably noticed in my tangential linux post. I never thought like that when I was unconsciously on windows. I never once wondered about what libraries I would need or "compiling" source codes or back-ward compatibility or backporting or even component crashes. Now all these things are in my subconscious as I experience quirk after quirk on this OS. It is interesting but sometime annoying as well...
Do I have a choice? Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like it.

jim - 08/07/11 18:41
I think about this all the time, it's basically the focus of my career.

I'm not disagreeing with what I think you're getting at, which is that we have to use our minds and not mindlessly click through software wizards.

I am disagreeing with the implication of your question, which I read as that UI design strives to remove the need to pay attention when instead it tries to direct it. And I'm also explaining my thought processes as I do this work.

Tools exist to allow a user to do something that they care about, and should only insist on as much attention and concern about the tool itself as is minimally needed in order to solve the user's problem. A UI designer's responsibility is to guide the user in such a way that their valuable and limited attention is spent in areas that a user is most likely to actually mean to spend it to accomplish something.

It's a combination of being consistent in how you construct things and providing coherency in how you align related concepts. Things that are alike should look alike. Things that are different should look different.

It's being novel only when you have a novel problem to solve, and not reinventing the wheel poorly at every opportunity when a more familiar solution would be kinder to the user.

It's stepping back and looking at how everything fits together, and preemptively solving as many possible misunderstandings as possible, to reduce frustration and error.

Everything about creating the right mix of these techniques is a judgement call about who your audience is, how often they use the tool, and what the consequences for screwing up are. UI for a web site is different from UI for a microwave, or from a programmer's build script.

Example: A hammer with a poor handle (uncomfortable to hold) might make a carpenter think more consciously about how is holding it, but does it really make him any more attentive to his actual job at hand (which is constructing a wall that is straight and sturdy)? A rock off the ground is just an "unintuitive" hammer.

Example: most unix commands provide options prefixed by a dash. But "dd" uses a totally different style, with name value pairs separated by an =. It's a block level file copy program, rarely used, and yet it's got a unique interface that's easy to screw up.

Example: hyperlinks. In 99.9% of web browsing, it's always safe to click a link (you can always go back). Sometimes web apps will have a link to delete something, instead of a button. If you're making a page, and you want to be sure a user thinks through the consequences of clicking on something, you make it a button. Most users have never consciously thought through this difference, but if you ask them about it, they immediately understand what you mean.

A way to distill this is to look at a problem and think, "What is the essential complexity?" A well designed interface will downplay or hide inessential complexity, and clarify the essential. The user is presumed to care about only the essential complexity.

For an MP3 converter, the essential complexity is merely choosing the songs to convert.

For a pilot, the essential complexity is managing a wide array of information and making holistic decisions, not consciously figuring out the how and why of a million gauges at once. That's why the gauges and units of those gauges are standardized and honed with almost a century's experience to provide information as clearly as possible. They can be read without any conscious effort at decipherment.

The UI designer whose work is least noticed is probably doing the best job possible.

This was fun to write up, thanks for bringing up the topic :)

tinypliny - 08/08/11 16:30
Maybe I will get used to the spacing on the chiclet keyboard... My newer laptop has one too, which is the basic reason I started looking for similar keyboard because I like them so much.

heidi - 08/08/11 16:23
I had a split keyboard for many years and loved it. The apple chiclet keyboard is the best - I use lots of different keyboards at client sites and those are consistently my favorite. I've always loved apple keyboards (since my first Apple II GS in the mid-80s). They're quiet, tight, easy to type with. My newest sony laptop has a chiclet keyboard (a really big feature for me on this purchase) and I like it a lot; it's much quieter, the keys are distinct and easy to find. I don't know why PC keyboards are so huge and noisy in comparison.

tinypliny - 08/07/11 21:26
Hmm.. I need to try typing on your apple chiclet keyboard someday or borrow it for a day (like a keyboard swap experiment where you could experiment with one of mine instead).

jim - 08/07/11 19:56
A week to get up to speed (though pretty quickly I got even faster... its a keyboard for touch typing). Another week or two after that to be able to switch to a normal keyboard and back comfortably.

paul - 08/07/11 19:56
I type on a pretty quiet apple flat chicklet keyboard for up to 10 hours per day with no wrist pain.

I used to have pain years ago but realized I just couldn't type with my wrists bent. Then again I never had much wrist pain to begin with. The worst is typing a a laptop on my laptop.

tinypliny - 08/07/11 19:37
how long did you take you to learn typing on that keyboard?

tinypliny - 08/07/11 19:36
I am headed your way. And yes, the conclusion definitely is that noisier = less pain. There doesn't seem to be any other way.

Hand separation seems to be the key to avoid RSI. I am really horrible at typing so I am not there yet. But with the amount of typing that is right ahead, I might just end up with another radically keyboard before a couple months are out.

jim - 08/07/11 18:46
I own this keyboard, it looks bizarre, it is expensive, and sounds like a machine gun when I'm typing (mechanical scissor switch). But it's the only keyboard that I can type on for 8 hours straight without the slightest twinge of pain. :::link:::

metalpeter - 08/07/11 13:11
:) well something that is scary but not so much that it stops one from working in theory could drive one... Of course if it is to scary then that is where the problem lies in creating bad work... Cause you just want to get done....

But the real problem with say playing music is that yes if you can find the right stuff it could help writing but at the same time it is something one must do instead of the writing so.....

tinypliny - 08/07/11 12:38
Put a spider on my computer? Balance teacups while doing tough yoga poses? Seriously, I am bit scared of your potential as an authority figure.

;-)

I do play music a lot but lately I have been playing a ton of romantic-era piano and it's not very effective at drowning out anything but helps me synthesize ideas. The keyboard noise interferes with that then.

And what you say is true. If I am writing on a deadline and really need to finish whatever, the sounds hardly matter. Sounds only matter when I am trying to be creative and think about connections, hypotheses, ideas, new projects etc.

metalpeter - 08/07/11 12:21
Sorry to be a wise ass a bit but I just thought of one thing that might again I say might fix this problem..... Crank So METAL!!!!! Or if you have to think and be in a place of zen sounds of the ocean? Point is if there are other sounds I'm guessing you won't notice the keyboard either that or put a big spider on the computer and it will distract you...... On a side note I have never thought of the sound of the keyboard ever and now since you wrote this post I can hear every key stroke.....

tinypliny - 08/07/11 19:38
I hope not. Seems like an insanely crazy job which might make me tear my hair out by the roots.

jim - 08/07/11 18:46
Pretty soon you'll be looking for work as a linux sysadmin :)

tinypliny - 08/07/11 12:25
LOL, yeah. I think this is where the "crazy" comes out. If I am really at some absolutely unconnected event "enjoying", the guilt is enough to drown me in it. But this is something connected (even it VERY tangentially and quite blatantly avoidable) to what I deal with daily at work. It sounds silly, but that's me. Someday, I might grow out of this and attempt to be "normal' but for now, I am sticking to the insanity of it all!

heidi - 08/07/11 12:15
(e:paul)!!! hahaha!!! She won't go do something that might actually relieve stress and anxiety...

uncutsaniflush - 08/07/11 11:49
(e:tinypliny) - remember that debian unstable and debian experimental are called that for a reason. Don't be surprised if apps you pull from those repositories crash (especially experimental) or don't work properly. Debian is only stable when you use debian stable.

paul - 08/07/11 11:44
Wow,you are procrastinating so hardcore.

tinypliny - 08/07/11 11:25
Hey! not fair. That was 10 minutes and I was coding on the other screen as I heard him speak. You can't see much anyway.

heidi - 08/07/11 11:24
You have time to find, watch and analyse this but not enough time to go watch firedancing? *hrmph*

metalpeter - 08/07/11 10:38
Hey'! I' like this guy...... He does give a good presentation... I kinda liken this to Dancing a bit.... I think that yes you need to learn the steps and what you are doing but then at some point you have to not think about those and just go kinda naturally (I suck at both so this is how I know....HA)... I admit don't watch any of the Kitchen shows by the time I found out two Buffalo people where on Hell's Kitchen or what ever show it was it was to late.... Everyone has different tastes so something could be cooked well and not liked but I do think cooking is an art form kinda....