Comments on: Software was made for people, not people for software

Why do we continue to try to force users into unnatural relationships with their software?

[kai6novice]

LOL, this is not news at all. People have been adapting software for a long time. One of the adaptation, we people have, is to tolerate software to make mistake and crash. Why should we simply accept the fact that software should be allow to crash or make mistake and then later, we install a patch over a patch over another patch to fix it? Why can't software company just adapt to the fact that software shouldn't never make a mistake and should never crash. Now-a-day, software company are more about speed than quality. Where are all the quality software?

[hawkeyeaz1]

Wow, I never expected to see a mini Bible study here. Kudos!

[SJSzlj]

This has been a "pet peeve" of mine for many years (yes, I'm old enough to have watched the birth of the "computer age").

What is it about "user friendly" that the tech developers do NOT understand? Do they think that all consumers want is a laundry list of features, regardless of how long the directions are, or how arcane and jargon-filled they are? "Getting it right" is not hard, it takes only the effort (time/resources/desire) to "get it right" (not just to "get it out the door & in the stores"). I am sitting here with two digital picture frames (Quantaray/Sunpac and GPX). While working with them the thought keeps nagging me: "This should NOT be this difficult (or time consuming)."

To me, technology - in its most perfect, ideal state - should be invisible. It would interface perfectly with the human animal; it would fit the way we think, act, move and speak. Technology should not require us to learn about it, but should be able to adapt itself to us. Perfect technology has no user manual. It should not draw attention to itself, it should just be there, doing what it was designed to do.

That's the ideal. Of course, we are not there yet, so we have manuals, and we have to learn about the technology to use it. But just adding more minimally useful features (that we are told should appeal to us) and more buttons and switches only makes the technology look (and act) like a confused, pimply faced adolescent. Sometimes I think the developers don't want to make tech easy because they intend tap into the prideful, primal male "I've conquered it" conceit. Then once you have "conquered it" you are now one of the "insiders" and can help lead other lost and wandering souls to the promised land.

Perhaps this happens because tech developers are used to dealing with, well, technology, and not humans. So they design technology that misses the mark, and it becomes technology "because we can do it," not technology that actually fits into our human existence and enhances it. And we buy it, because we are told we need it and should like it.

[userNoname]

Have you tried Deki Wiki?

[Matt Asay]

I'm actually an advisor to MindTouch (DekiWiki creators) and agree with your implicit statement: It's much easier to use.

[jimafrost]

As previously implied, there are wiki implementations that have document editors. In fact we use one at work. The "free" versions (like Twiki that I use at home) usually do not, perhaps because writing a wysiwyg editor is a hell of a lot of work.

So really the argument isn't so much whether or not it's better to make easier to use software, but whether or not people are willing to pay for such software. Often, especially in the case of something like a wiki that is usually set up in an ad-hoc manner, the answer is "no." So you pay a little more in effort to pay a little less in cash.

jim frost
[e-mail]

[driehle]

This is an old discussion between the WYSIWYG and the markup school of thought and unlikely to be settled soon.

There is a markup standardization effort at www.wikicreole.org that can also be extended for common WYSIWYG.

Also remember that Wikipedia was created using markup only---basically no visual editing at all. So you can't say it doesn't work at all.

If you want to raise your voice further, come to the Wiki Symposium this year (or send someone), see www.wikisym.org

[MarkDilley]

The funny thing that people forget is this - you don't need to know any markup language to use wiki at all. Just click edit, type words in the language that you know, and hit save. There, you just used a wiki, any wiki.

[irabinovitch]

Matt,

There are plenty of WYSIWYG wikis these days which do not require you to learn wikiml. Give Mindtouch's Deki or Atlassian's Confluence a shot. Naturally, I prefer to open source and much more powerful Deki.

Ilan