GemX's Classy Reply to Daly's Questions

Posted by dan7000
Jun 28, 2008 at 08:35 PM

Hey Pierre,

I’m not intending to criticize your software - I’m just voicing a philosophy I’ve had in my own software development efforts. Disclaimer: I was engineering manager for Quicken for 5 years. I also designed and developed some other fairly popular commercial software. I never met my own standard for intuitive usability but I always pushed my team to think of it this way: if you need to point to the help file, it’s a usability flaw.

Sure, it’s easier to achieve this goal with established software paradigms than with new or innovative ideas. But new ideas can also be intuitive for users. TiVo is of course the best example. The oldest, least-tech-savvy visitor to my house can operate our TiVo immediately, even if they’ve never seen a DVR before. Another brilliant example is the world wide web. I remember in 1994 or so - if you used Prodigy you were always looking at the help file. If you used compuserve you were always trying to get help in the forums. But anybody who lauched a web browser instantly knew what to do - there was no instruction needed, for the newest, most innovative technology idea in the history of computing.

The key to intuitive usability for new software paradigms is to adopt a metaphor to an established paradigm. For instance, when Quicken was a brand-new idea, it adopted the checkbook metaphor. The entire program looked and operated like a checkbook, and that was the key to its success. At the same time, other programs tried to force a database or spreadsheet approach to personal finance management, and they all failed miserably. Today, other software can provide the metaphor: if something has columns, we expect it to sort when we click on the column header; if something has an “OK” button, we expect our data to be saved; if it looks like excel, we expect to be able to edit cells in-place. Software designers can look at every aspect of our programs and ask: what is the metaphor for this? How can I make it intuitive and obvious?