On 21 September 2013 21:27, Joseph Rushton Wakeling < joseph.wakel...@webdrake.net> wrote:
> > Specifically in this case: the user-friendliness of GNU/Linux distros has > come a _huge_ way in the last 10 years, but there's no reason why they > shouldn't be every bit as surface-friendly (maybe even more so) than the > popular commercial OS's while retaining all the power that experts need and > want. It's a terrible shame that more attention is not given to this > surface-friendliness, and it's striking how resistant many old-school free > software people are to usability-oriented improvements _that don't > necessarily constrain them_. > > ** Example 1 ** > I was a longstanding KDE user until with the 12.04 release of Ubuntu, I > switched over to using Unity. I found it much more usable and effective in > all sorts of ways, but initially I was frustrated because there were > superficially less config options available. It was striking how quickly I > realized _I didn't miss them_ and that most of that configurability I'd had > with KDE was a distraction rather than something that assisted me. As > someone wrote round-about that time, there's a tendency for customisability > to be an excuse for lack of design. > I really like this point. It's something I think I'll definitely keep in mind in the future. I'm certainly guilty of this myself; "surely people would prefer the option" when I'm writing some code. But in reality, in almost every piece of software I use myself, even as a 'power user', I tend to use it in it's default configuration. What this really highlights is that I'm a terrible UX coder myself :P