I was using a CD burning program the other day. To announce that the CD had finished burning, the program played a sound: a stern woman’s voice saying, “Process finished,” or something like that. OK, not so bad, unless your first time using it happens to be when you start a slow speed record before going to bed, and the computer is right next to where you sleep, and you live alone.
Just as I was dropping off, this strange woman made her cryptic pronouncement while seemingly leaning over my bed. I made a two foot leap approximately straight up, which is pretty impressive from a lying down position. Fortunately, the hard landing on the tile floor got my hard beating again.
“My theory is interfaces should be painful to the user.
If the user clicks this button, it makes the sound of a bird hitting a window.
If they hit enter, it makes the sound of puking.
This button makes the sound of nails down a chalkboard.
Now, listen to what happens when a user does something wrong…”[/dilbert]
My top (or is it bottom) three in ascending order of awfulness:
The Windows 98 Installer - OK, it’s nice to have a graphical install client, but was it really necessary to have the ‘Welcome to Windows 98’ thing go BONGGGGGG! at full volume?
Pretty much any bespoke software installer (i.e. one that isn’t Installshield or something like that - say, the one that comes with TeeChart components, made with DemoShield IIRC) - no consistency over the placement of ‘next’ and ‘quit without installing’ buttons from dialog to dialog, everything makes noises just when you mouse over it, it won’t close until it has painfully slowly rolled up the credits etc.
The driver/user interface for the IntelPlay QX3 USB Microscope - great bit of hardware for the price, software is a steaming pile of excrement - the application won’t run in a window - it insists on being full screen - 800x600 - if it crashes, it leaves the display in that mode but even if it doesn’t, it causes the desktop icons to be rearranged (like when you go into Safe Mode) - poor layout of functions, stupid childish interface (OK, the device is targeted at kids, but even my quite young ones find it patronising) - dumb sound effects on every mouse over and click (like a sort of robotic ‘uh-oh’ when you mouse over the quit button, for example).
“Process finished”? And that scared you? That’s nothing.
Anyone who has AOL (and I realizes everyone around here is to sophisticated to still have AOL, but…er…I do) knows whenever anyone on your IM lists comes online it’s announced with a door creaking open. Creepy enough.
But if you have the English version (EOL?) it has a English, female voice announcing:
“You’ve got company.”
:eek: glances wildly around the room
Still haven’t gotten used to that.
I can’t remember if it’s Spybot or Ad-Aware, but one of those two makes a foul SFLAARRRGHHK noise when it’s done. Rather loud, startling and heavy on the bass. Fortunately, it’s easy to turn off in the program’s preferences, but really, they could have used something less noxious, or just made a call to use the Windows Exclamation or Asterisk sound, rather than add to the program’s size by incorporating its own sound file.
I like AVG and the interface isn’t particularly difficult to use but DAMN the little graphics they have plastered all over the interface are ugly. They just look like icky clip art from the mid-90’s.
What is it about the SDMB? No matter how many times I proofread, I always have at least one typo. Of course, this being the Straight Dope, those errors are immediately identified and mocked.
Now that said mocking has been ably accomplished, I encourage (plead) the rest of the TM to please read “heart” for “hard” in the OP. Thanks!
Bah! You kids and your GUIs and talking programs. Some of us spend a lot of our time on consoles where the user interface is:
$
or:
SQL>
But they’re a lavish use of pixels compared with one interface I remember (Dbase? I bet someone out there knows) which was:
.
See it? The command prompt was a single full-stop, one lonely pixel.
BTW writing user interfaces (especially GUIs) is tricky, you can’t trust users to do anything right. It is very tempting to punish the user with (say) the sound of a puking-bird-hitting-a-blackboard (thanks Lud) when they do something stupid. If I had my way user interfaces would include electrodes
A few years ago, a friend bought a “cutting edge” camera; it talked. We were at a wedding. during the prayer, she decided to take a picture. In the all but silent church, a loud, male, seemingly Asian voice shouts "TOO DAK TOO DAK TOO DAK.
When I joined, the main product’s GUI was in bright pink and bright green (most developers’ colors of choice in my experience). The menu had a graphical background, and could be detached and floated with absolutely no way of re-docking it (when I asked why this choice had been made, the developer said “because I could”). The logo was stretched sideways. If your screen was bigger than 800 x 600 the background repeated. There were no cancel buttons on some of the options. Every time you started the program you had to run a wizard.
That is quite a good site; as Vision of Love says, some of it is a bit picky, but most of it is really sound and should be compulsory reading material for developers.
<rant against=‘Small Clanger’>
Hmm … who are you calling a kid? I’ve used SQL Plus. I’ve done UNIX shell programming. I have cygwin installed on my Windows box. My editor of choice is still (often) vi.
</rant>
<rant against=‘Tony the QA Idiot’>
The users are OK. You expect them to be morons. It’s the QA people that drive me nuts. I used to work with one (Tony I know you’re still out there somewhere) that I guarantee could crash any program within ten minutes, and every time would deny he had deviated from the test plan at all. Being able to produce those situations is a great skill, and would help us improve the software quality, but only if YOU REMEMBER HOW YOU FREAKIN’ DID IT!!!
:wally
</rant>
When you’re ready to burn a CD in Toast Titanium, a dialog comes up telling you “Please insert a recordable disc!”. That exclamation mark bugs me beyond all reason. Am I pissing the program off? Not putting the disc in promptly enough for its touchy little self?
I know it’s a small thing, but I think Mac users overall are like the princess and the pea when it comes to interface design.
I still keep waiting for someone to come out with a GPS with a reasonable usable user interface. Granted, the new UIs are much better than the UIs of a few years ago, but still… every time I pick up the damn thing I have to re-learn how to use it, and I still can’t figure out how to do some things that I know it does.
In a perfect world, the TiVo UI designers would design all UIs.
