

User Interaction 101 - dhotson
http://andymatuschak.org/articles/2008/05/07/user-interaction-101/

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sysop073
This post was excellent, although I take issue with the silent waiter part.
His waiter example was trivial; there's no reason you wouldn't want the
marshmallow bowl refilled, but usually programs aren't like that. I hate when
programs do stuff without asking me, especially by default. Everytime I start
using OpenOffice on somebody else's machine it takes it all of a minute to
incorrectly autocorrect something I've typed (I disable autocorrect on my
machines). That's the kind of "silent waiter" I hate, I don't want it
automatically doing something unless there's absolutely no way I wouldn't want
it done, and that's fairly rare

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sanj
If you're going to be a silent waiter, you have to be a _damn_ good one.

"any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology" (Larry
Niven)

I like turning this on its head: if you're going to do something with
technology it has better be _so_ good that it looks like magic. Every time it
fails, the illusion is broken and flow/trust/fluidity is gone. It has failed
you.

If autocorrection was _always_ right, you wouldn't mind it (see
<http://twitter.com/gruber/statuses/880736890>).

If the caching algorithm of your drive controller was sometimes wrong and you
had to manually find data in the right sector, you'd be annoyed by it too.

If your code is promising to do something for the user, it has to do it
_exactly right every time_. Otherwise you need to package, promote and
conceptualize it differently so that you don't constantly fail to live up to
expectations.

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thwarted
You turn that Niven quote on its head all right, all the way back to Arthur C.
Clark.

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hooande
This guy should write a book. We could use a modern "Psychology of Everyday
Things", focused on software design.

And no, Steve Kurg's book doesn't cut it.

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simoncoggins
This link (<http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/>) from the comments is fascinating
also. A long article but well worth a read.

Some of the techniques could be just what a start-up needs to give it the edge
over, "just good enough" web apps.

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tdoggette
It takes a very good post to make me subscribe to someone's blog, especially
an Apple person's blog, but this is high-quality Tognazzini-level musing on
interface design. Better, even: Modern, web-focused.

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unalone
Not to make this an Apple Person argument, but I think this is the sort of
Apple Person mentality that I like the most: the one that isn't about
constantly harping on other computer types, but that just quietly appreciates
how beautifully simple most Apple stuff is.

I subscribed as well.

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sanj
"slowed by the speed of their ideas rather than by the speed of their tool"

Brilliant insight. It explains the reason that I find IDEs so damn annoying.

