Skip to main content

Defending Bob (and other unopopular UI choices)

Adam Barr really went out on a limb with this one but reading the comments is where you'll find even more gold in this great blog post.

Dumping on the iPod, promoting the "Designer Era" and then hearing about different ways people interpret design.

It's a great post (comments included). I don't know if Adam was behind the "Microsoft iPod" video but many of the comments make the same point. "Apple does defrag behind the scenes, if MS did it, they would still put up a big sign telling you they were doing it".

And no, Adam doesn't defend Bob 1.0 completely - "Windows does not necessarily need to become Bob, it just needs to be designed right for *its* customers. Maybe some brilliant designers can figure out one UI that works for everyone, or not." (for the record, Trish loved using Spot the dog as the Office 200x assistant and we did get a copy of Bob because it DID make computing somewhat less confrontational. Was it perfect? Absolutely not - but it did include some interesting ideas)

But hey - I'm still looking for a useful UI because the whole Windows folder/explorer approach just doesn't work (oh yeah, the finder works the same way) - maybe that's why Google gets it right with gMail. You want to find something? Just type it into search and there it is.

Maybe this is part of what Office 2007 is trying to do - but myself? I still find myself trying to find where all the old options were. I've tried "Rooms" - still doesn't make sense. I find I'm living directly in a browser these days so maybe something will show up there. But - how do I code within a browser? Hmmm...

Maybe MindJet should come up with a Web-version of MindManager. It could be a cool Ajax app for sure - and sync directly between mobile and desktop versions and could even do a great job of showing the links between everything you look at. Kind of like Cnet's News Mapper tool.

Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: Code and Design

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Elevating Project Specifications with Three Insightful ChatGPT Prompts

For developers and testers, ChatGPT, the freely accessible tool from OpenAI, is game-changing. If you want to learn a new programming language, ask for samples or have it convert your existing code. This can be done in Visual Studio Code (using GitHub CoPilot) or directly in the ChatGPT app or web site.  If you’re a tester, ChatGPT can write a test spec or actual test code (if you use Jest or Cypress) based on existing code, copied and pasted into the input area. But ChatGPT can be of huge value for analysts (whether system or business) who need to validate their needs. There’s often a disconnect between developers and analysts. Analysts complain that developers don’t build what they asked for or ask too many questions. Developers complain that analysts haven’t thought of obvious things. In these situations, ChatGPT can be a great intermediary. At its worst, it forces you to think about and then discount obvious issues. At best, it clarifies the needs into documented requirements. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Respect

Respect is something humans give to each other through personal connection. It’s the bond that forms when we recognize something—or someone—as significant, relatable, or worthy of care. This connection doesn’t have to be limited to people. There was an  article  recently that described the differing attitudes towards AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini (formerly Bard). Some people treat them like a standard search while others form a sort of personal relationship — being courteous, saying “please” and “thank you”. Occasionally, people share extra details unrelated to their question, like, ‘I’m going to a wedding. What flower goes well with a tuxedo?’ Does an AI “care” how you respond to it? Of course not — it reflects the patterns it’s trained on. Yet our interaction shapes how these tools evolve, and that influence is something we should take seriously. Most of us have all expressed frustration when an AI “hallucinates”. Real or not, the larger issue is that we have hi...
Post a Comment
Read more

When A Machine Starts To Care

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke (1962)  I first used that quote when I was starting out in the tech industry. Back then, it was a way to illustrate just how fast and powerful computers had become. Querying large datasets in seconds felt magical—at least to those who didn’t build them.  Today, we’re facing something even more extraordinary. Large Language Models (LLMs) can now carry on conversations that approach human-level fluency. Clarke’s quote applies again. And just as importantly, many researchers argue that LLMs meet—or at least brush up against—the criteria of the Turing Test.  We tend to criticize LLMs for their “hallucinations,” their sometimes-confident inaccuracies. But let’s be honest: we also complain when our friends misremember facts or recount things inaccurately. This doesn’t excuse LLMs—it simply highlights that the behavior isn’t entirely alien. In some ways, it mirrors our own cognitive limits....
Post a Comment
Read more