
Scott Adams on Bad Interfaces - dan_sim
http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/bad_interfaces/
======
edw519
Bad design is _everywhere_...

My old microwave oven had one control, a dial. Just put the food in and turn
it. The whole dial represented 12 minutes, so just estimate how far to turn
it. My new microwave has 22 buttons. I forget which is which. I have to turn
on the lights and get my glasses.

The previous owner installed vertical blinds on the double hung windows. Think
about that. Impossible to have open windows without endless noise and
movement.

An office where I work is near an airport. They have a key card system that
beeps with a successful swipe. So you can't hear the beep when an airplane is
passing overhead (every 5 minutes) and have to wait until it's gone to get
into the building.

Another office has "gone green" and installed motion sensors everywhere to
turn off lights not being used. Good luck finishing up in the restroom if
you've been sitting too long.

Some of my software asks "Save before exit?" _whether I've changed anything or
not_. I got so tired of trying to remember if I had updated or only viewed, I
just click "Yes" every time. Pointless.

Every time the garbage truck drops the dumpster back down next door, 3 car
alarms go off. No one ever responds, because they assume that it's a false
alarm. Not that big a deal until the garbage truck shows up at 4:00 a.m. on
Saturday.

My TV remote has 33 buttons. So they're so small, you have to stop and look at
it to hit "Mute" or "Last Channel", the only 2 buttons I ever use. Who
designed this thing, a munchkin?

The airports in Orlando, Philadelphia, San Jose, and Miami put the restaurants
(not counting junk food) _outside_ of security. So you have to wonder, "Do I
have enough time to eat and then get through the line?" (Pittsburgh, Tampa,
and Chicago Midway did it right.)

The trunk release and gas cap release levers in my car are next to each other
but not visible. It's hard to pull one without the other. Seems like my gas
cap door is always open.

A theater we went to the other night only had aisles on the sides with 50
seats in between. Do your really want that great seat in the center knowing
you may have to climb over 25 people if you need the restroom before the movie
is over?

Intersections that gridlock because of traffic from the next light. Too many
to mention.

Microsoft Windows.

~~~
jodrellblank
Bad design is everywhere. I am typing on an Apple keyboard because the key
feel is nice. The machined aluminium and white keys add a touch of quality to
my desk. The scruffy A4 notebook it sits on to counter the uncomfortable and
unconfigurable propped-up-at-the-back tilt spoils it slightly.

Vista. When I need a new PPTP connection, I open "Network Connections" (where
PPTP connections are listed), then go looking for File -> New (which doesn't
exist), then File -> Connect which is greyed out and irrelevant, I glance
longingly at at the temptress of File -> New Incoming Connection which is
available - if only it was for Outgoing connections - then try Right Click ->
New..., which also doesn't exist.

After cursing for a bit I remember to go to the Network And Sharing Center
(where PPTP connections are _not_ listed) and click "Connect to Network".

Am I the only PuTTY user who opens it, connects to a host, types the wrong
username and then gets annoyed when on a failed login it only re-prompts for a
password, not for both username and password?

~~~
blasdel
PuTTY is just an awful piece of software in general: they take all the SSH
options, rename them, and rearrange them into a bizarre menu structure with an
obtuse session-saving system that reminds me of the horror of HyperTerm.

Install Cygwin, and use OpenSSH from your shell in MinTTY (which uses the
PuTTY's terminal emulator implementation, but doesn't fuck up the UI and adds
all the missing options).

~~~
jodrellblank
You can't seriously reply saying "PuTTY is awful, instead install _Cygwin_ "?

PuTTY is almost as good a program can get - no install, basic use case just
works, good default colour scheme, proper full screen option available. Fast,
simple, minimal fuss until you hit some stupid terminal quirks.

Cygwin is almost as bad as a program can get - massive install, with confusing
nonresizable large package choice dialog, masses of files everywhere,
services, ugly stuck in a command prompt by default, hacks to bring everything
unpleasant about _nix onto Windows.

Get many good things from command line _nix from
<http://unxutils.sourceforge.net>, put them in a folder in your PATH and leave
the CygWin swamp a long way away.

Maybe I'll try it again with MinTTY, it does look like a good terminal for
CygWin. It's not an easy decision though, I predict it wont be at all fun.

------
markpercival
Read the following Scott Adams blog quotes:

"I can't get past the fact that it's sitting there wasting energy while its
only function is to confuse me up to three dozen times per day."

"Lately I have been wondering whether online reviews should remain legal."

"I can't help seeing world affairs as essentially a bunch of middle managers
sitting around a rectangular table coming up with clever ways to convince the
masses that turds are diamonds."

"Humans are obsessed with their weight. I think a big part of that obsession
is the simple fact that weight is easy to measure."

"What the world needs is software that makes it easy for senior citizens to
use e-mail."

Now imagine them being read by an angry Andy Rooney.

I'm just putting that out there.

~~~
steveklabnik
Seeing all of those disparate quites + Andy Rooney made me think of this:
<http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1903619>

------
moron4hire
I have one UI pet peeve: mousing over large screens.

I look at it this way: when the Apple Macintosh made the mouse popular in
1984, it was with a 9 inch, 512x324 resolution display. I got started
computing on a 17 inch, 640x480 resolution display, so not that much larger in
terms of usable screen real estate. Now, I have two 22 inch, 1680x1050
resolution displays, one turned vertically. For comparison, I made this image
[http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/thOvKDvamA7iCeQLCdyGIw?...](http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/thOvKDvamA7iCeQLCdyGIw?authkey=Gv1sRgCJqd-72OjOqvxAE&feat=directlink)

The red box in the middle is the old Macintosh display. It looks roughly 5
inches across the diagonal. Mousing interfaces haven't changed in any
significant way in the last 30 years, but displays have grown astronomically
in that time. If arguments against the mouse over text interfaces were
contentious back-in-the-day, it's even worse now. My wrists can't take this
anymore.

~~~
jodrellblank
Off topic: What's the panel to the left of your solution explorer in Visual
Studio?

~~~
moron4hire
That would be a plugin, the name of which escapes me, that turns the scrollbar
for the code editor into a thumbnail image of the full length of code.

~~~
shabble
sounds a lot like the 'minimap', which I think was first used in the Sublime
editor. There's an emacs version at <http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MiniMap>
that I haven't gotten around to trying yet, but keep meaning to.

------
Deestan
A lot of people seem to think using light switches for anything is a good
idea. Popular sins off the top of my head:

\- Light switch used as apartment doorbell. Mine sits right beside the hall
lightswitch.

\- Light switch used as door opener. Of course put right beside one of the
hall's light switches.

\- Light switch used as control for the office-wide motorized blinds. Of
course put right inbetween the other proper light switches used for
controlling light.

~~~
quantumhobbit
My grandfather's house has light switches for the lights in the garage, the
doorbell, and the garage door opener. People have dented their cars, which
were parked halfway into the garage, trying to ring the doorbell. There is now
a sign posted with very detailed instructions.

------
jazzychad
> Were the switches ordered the way I thought they should be, and that was my
> memory trick, or were they ordered the opposite of how I would have done it,
> and THAT was my memory trick.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that uses this "opposite of normal logic" trick
in order to remember how things work sometimes.

~~~
TheSOB88
If it were the way you think they should be, why would you be asking yourself
that? Unless your last place was confusing and you're still confused from
that.

------
vinhboy
Yup, I've had one of those light switch + disposal switch combo myself. Who
thought that was a good idea?

~~~
ambulatorybird
Why can't you just label the switches, though? A couple strips of paper and
tape are all you need. (Of course, the fact that such a fix is necessary does
confirm that something is wrong with the design.)

~~~
JacobAldridge
Tangential anecdote - someone in my office went label mad mid last year. I
made the observation that anybody who needed a label to know that the _only_
light switch in the meeting room was, indeed, the light switch _for_ the
meeting room, was too dumb to benefit from meeting with us anyway.

~~~
derefr
My kitchen has a switch on a little stub of a wall, the other side of which is
part of the living room. The living-room-side switch controls the kitchen
lights, and vice-versa. It makes sense when you realize that you can use them
to do a sort of "airlock" process, turning on the light in the room ahead of
you, entering it, then turning around and switching off the lights in the room
behind you.

------
jodrellblank
As a counter anecdote, I have installed USB 3G mobile connection things.

A few years ago, the software was so fussy that we broke a Windows install
past our ability to fix it merely by installing in the wrong order. After
install it needed to be run as an administrator then as a user, then
configured with custom profiles choosing which kinds of devices you might
have. It was a mess.

Today I had to install the latest version and wasn't looking forward to it.
Plugged the device in, it appeared as a USB stick with an installer. Ran the
installer, ran the program - on first launch it quietly detected and installed
some drivers and presented with a 'connect' button which ... worked.

I wish there was some standard way I could give feedback to the development
team for their excellent work and to the company management for encouraging
(or at least, permitting and subsequently getting out of the way of) such
improvement and customer focus.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Such "pretend to be a USB stick but not really" devices really suck everywhere
except Windows, though. (They typically use fairly standard drivers in the
end, but unless there is a specific entry to tell the kernel "this is really a
...", they are going to be seen as USB sticks instead.)

In short, I'm not sure they deserve that much praise.

~~~
jodrellblank
The bit I'm praising is nothing to do with how open the device or drivers are,
it's how much the design of the interface and end user experience has improved
(and the team who made that a priority and then worked on it). So much
software gets changed or more cluttered as time progresses and it's really
pleased me that this hasn't.

If they could be open and still be like that, even better.

------
mortenjorck
I wonder if Adams has ever read Donald A. Norman's classic _The Design of
Everyday Things._ He'd probably love it; this kind of critique is exactly what
the book explores so well.

------
mickt
My personal peeve is door handles.

You know what I mean, you come to a door and you don't know if you should push
or pull. It happens to me almost everyday at work when I'm deep in thought.

"The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman, nicely sums up a lot of
design problems. Even tho the book was written in 1990 or earlier, we're still
facing many of the same design problems.

Everything2 sums up the book nicely:
<http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=140365>

------
Groxx
My personal UI peeve is alarm clocks. When I want the sound to stop, I hit the
off button as often as I hit snooze, often because the snooze button is
smallish and stiff, and I still have to hunt for it amidst the other buttons.

What I'd like:

When the alarm is going off, _any_ button should snooze. A later "off" button
press (ie, a minute or so) should be what turns off the alarm. This way, a
literal "whack" would silence the alarm, without fear of falling asleep after
turning it off.

------
mhb
Product idea: A little plastic boot that slides onto a light switch to
represent its true function. Like a Japanese eraser garbage can.

------
nodogbite
Scott Adams turned into Andy Rooney.

