

Better software through less UI - e1ven
http://www.potionfactory.com/blog/2009/03/10/better-software-through-less-ui

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Hexstream
"One [problem] is that the user has no easy way of discovering how complex the
recurrence rules can be."

Easy. Show both the text field and the traditional UI at the same time right
from the beginning and link them together so that manipulating the traditional
UI updates the text field and vice-versa. Have an area where you show a few
additional alternate syntaxes for the same "sentence" so that users can see
that the syntax is far from being rigid, however if you input a sentence and
then later manipulate the UI, the text field should retain the original style
(not canonicalize to the default syntax).

Ok, this might not be so easy to implement but I'm pretty sure it's the best
solution for the user as it scales from beginner to expert.

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trjordan
Tripeedo (<http://www.tripeedo.com>) actually does this - I agree, it's a
really nice way to let the user know they're ding the right thing. I find it a
lot better than the traditional calendar widgets.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people out there who don't like the
keyboard. It's easy to forget this, especially with so many people in CS and
IT who try to never take their hands away from it , but there are a lot of
potential users who would rather do everything with the mouse. Efficiency
isn't a concern for these people (like my mom), since the input speed into the
computer isn't ever their bottleneck, no matter how slow.

That said, nice job! I love natural language parsers!

~~~
adudley
Yeah, this is actually an issue we've encountered with Tripeedo.

As a UI element, the calendar widget seems clunky and outdated -- yet if you
don't know the exact date of your travel, it's nice to have a visual prompt.
So there are cases where text input alone might not be sufficient. The user
might need or want more guidance.

It's a challenging task to try to integrate both input mechanisms at the same
time. We're exploring it though.

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michael_dorfman
That's not "less UI", it's just a different UI with fewer graphical elements.

I'm not arguing against it-- he's come up with a simple DSL, and exposed that
to the users-- but what would it mean to have "less UI" and maintain a given
feature-set?

~~~
melvinram
How is it not less UI, if he reduced multiple screens and buttons to one text
box? He literally reduced the quantity of interfaces a user interacts with.

I'm not convinced that we can treat "less UI = better app" as an axiom but I
don't see your point.

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comatose_kid
Any registered iPhone Developer should also check out Apple's iPhone Tech Talk
World Tour videos. There are a couple of good talks on UI design.

They're available through itunes if you have an ADC account.

