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- Hacker News
- If handbrake scares them, don’t you dare to demonstrate how to use ffmpeg. I remember when I used handbrake for the first time and thought “wow, it’s much more convenient than struggling with ffmpeg”.by andreldm
- You don't need two different versions of the software, one that is easy and one that is powerful. You can have one version that is both easy and powerful. Key concepts here are (1) progressive disclosure and (2) constraints.
See Don Norman's Design of Everyday things.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure/
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/positive-constraints-in-ux-wo...
by lateforwork - The problem is that everyone wants a different 20% of the functionality.
Actual good UI/UX design isn't trivial and it tends to require a tight feedback loop between testers, designers, implementers, and users.
A lot of FOSS simply doesn't have the resources to do that.
by snovymgodym - Some reasons for this:
1. Free software is developed for the developer's own needs and developers are going to be power users.
2. The cost to expose options is low so from the developer's perspective it's low effort to add high value (perceiving the options as valuable).
3. The developer doesn't know who the customer is and rather than research/refine just tries to hit all the boxes.
4. The distribution of the software itself means anyone who successfully installs it themselves really is a power user and does like the options. Installing it for family and friends doesn't work.
Probably many other factors!
- > Free audio editing software that requires hours of learning to be useful for simple tasks.
To be fair, the Audacity UX designer made a massive video about the next UX redesign and how he tried to get rid of "modes" and the "Audacity says no" problem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38
So this problem should get better in the future. Good UX (doesn't necessarily have to have a flashy UI, but just a good UX) in free software is often lacking or an afterthought.
by fschuett - People want features, and they're willing to learn complicated UIs to get them. A software that has hyper simplified options has a very limited audience. Take his example: we have somebody who has somehow obtained a "weird" video file, yet whose understanding of video amounts to wanting it to be "normal" so they can play it. For such a person, there are two paths: become familiar enough with video formats that you understand exactly what you want, and correspondingly can manipulate a tool like handbrake to get it, or stick to your walled-garden-padded-room reality where somebody else gives you a video file that works. A software that appeals to the weird purgatory in the middle necessarily has a very limited audience. In practice, this small audience is served by websites. Someone searches "convert x to y" and a website comes up that does the conversion. Knowing some specialized software that does that task (and only that one narrow task) puts you so far into the domain of the specialist that you can manage to figure out a specialist tool.by f33d5173
- A lot of this type of stuff boils down to what you're used to.
My wife is not particularly tech savvy. She is a Linux user, however. When we started a new business, we needed certain applications that only run on Windows and since she would be at the brick and mortar location full time, I figured we could multi-purpose a new laptop for her and have her switch to Windows.
She hated it and begged for us to get a dedicated Windows laptop for that stuff so she could go back to Linux.
Some of you might suggest that she has me for tech support, which is true, but I can't actually remember the last time she asked me to troubleshoot something for her with her laptop. The occasions that do come to mind are usually hardware failure related.
Obviously the thing about generlizations is that they're never going to fit all individuals uniformly. My wife might be an edge case. But she feels at home using Linux, as it's what she's used to ... and strongly loathed using Windows when it was offered to her.
I feel that kind of way about Mac vs PC as well. I am a lifelong PC user, and also a "power user." I have extremely particular preferences when it comes to my UI and keyboard mappings and fonts and windowing features. When I was forced to use a Mac for work, I honestly considered looking for a different position because it was just that painful for me. Nothing wrong with Mac OS X, a lot of people love it. But I was 10% as productive on it when compared to what I'm used to... and I'm "old dog" enough that it was just too much change to be able to bear and work with.
by gspencley - Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one.
Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I just need ..." is difficult. It takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of onerous management structure, to prevent the interface from quickly devolving back into the million options or schizming into other projects.
Simply put, it is a desirable state, but an unstable one.
by squeedles