[OT] "The Condescending UI" (was: Do we need Win95/98/Me support?)

[foobar]

On Monday, 23 January 2012 at 10:54:15 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 1/23/2012 2:22 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Although I disagree with phonetic being *necessarily* better 
>> than
>> ideographic. I do agree with the benefits of phonetic you 
>> describe -
>> essentially "easier to learn". But the benefit of ideographic 
>> is that they
>> can be quicker and easier to use *after* you've learned them.
>
> I find that very difficult to believe. But I don't know Kanji.
>
>
>> Children and non-native speakers are taught the phonetic 
>> alphabets first
>> (hiragana and katakana), because they're easier to learn and 
>> can handle any
>> word with a small number of simple symbols. Then learners move 
>> on to the
>> ideographic ones (the Chinese kanji). I only ever learned a 
>> few kanji, but
>> you notice pretty quickly that once you've learned a kanji you 
>> can read it
>> much more quickly than the phonetic equivalent. (It also helps 
>> your brain
>> divide a sentence into words, since Japanese doesn't use 
>> spaces, but that's
>> not really relevent here).
>
> I've seen the same books written in both Kanji and English. The 
> English ones were smaller, significantly so. I suspect the 
> problem was the Kanji font had to be considerably larger in 
> order to be legible, which negated any compression advantage it 
> might have.
>
>
>> I think a big part of the reason kanji is easier to read (once 
>> you've
>> learned it) is that your eyes don't have to move nearly as 
>> much, and there's
>> much more visual distinction between words (since there's so 
>> many more basic
>> patterns). The fact that they originate from images is 
>> irrelevant since they
>> don't really retain much of the resemblance they once did (a 
>> few of them do,
>> like "mountain" or "gate", but only if you already know how to 
>> "see" it -
>> like being told the "box of kleenex" is a printer). It really 
>> is exactly the
>> same as reading "42" instead of "fourty-two". Or the standard 
>> VCR-control
>> icons instead of "fast-forward", "next chapter", etc. Totally 
>> obscure if you
>> don't already know them, but much quicker and easier to read 
>> then the
>> english words if you do.
>>
>> As far as ability to look things up: Other ideographic 
>> languages may be
>> different than this (and this certainly doesn't apply to 
>> computer icons
>> either), but most of the Japanese kanji (ie, Chinese 
>> characters) are
>> constructed from a smaller number of common building blocks, 
>> the "radicals"
>> (around 100ish-or-so, IIRC?). As such, there actually is such 
>> thing as kanji
>> dictionaries where you can look up an unknown symbol. (I 
>> almost bought one
>> once...)
>>
>> Getting back to software, I like the words when I'm learning a 
>> program
>> (whether they're tooltips or labels) since the icons are 
>> initially
>> meaningless. But once I learn what the icon means, I often 
>> prefer to not
>> have the words because, compared to the icons, they're just 
>> indistinct
>> visual clutter (and they take up that much more screen real 
>> estate). The
>> color in icons also adds yet another dimension for your eyes 
>> to lock onto
>> which text labels just don't offer, at least not as naturally.
>
> I agree that color can help, but it helps just as well with 
> text. That's why we have color syntax highlighting editors.
>
>
>> Another thing to note: While the connection between an icon 
>> and it's meaning
>> may not (ever) be close enough to initially teach you what it 
>> does, the
>> metaphor (even for non-physical things) is usually close 
>> enough, or logical
>> enough in its own way, to help you *remember* what it does 
>> after you've
>> initially learned it.
>
> I still can't remember which of | and O means "on" and "off". 
> Ever since the industry helpfully stopped labeling switches 
> with "on" and "off" my usual technique is to flip it back and 
> forth until it goes on. Is it really progress to change from a 
> system where 99% of the world knows what it means to one where 
> 2% know? I suspect it is driven by some people who feel guilty 
> about knowing english, or something like that.
>
> I remember in the 1970's when the europeans decided to 
> standardize on a traffic "stop" sign. They bikeshedded so much 
> over this, the compromise selected was the american octagonal 
> STOP sign. Nationalistic egos prevented selecting one from a 
> european country.
>
> Bring up Adobe's pdf viewer. It has a whole row of icons across 
> the top. I defy you to tell me what they do without hovering 
> over each. Nobody has ever figured out a picture that 
> intuitively means "save", "send" or "print". Some icons do have 
> meaningful pictures, like scroll arrows. But the rest is an 
> awful stretch that is driven by some ideology <shatner>must --- 
> make --- icon</shatner> rather than practicality.
>
> Back to Thunderbird email. The icon for "Spell" is ABC over a 
> check mark. That is not smaller or more intuitive than "Spell".

A few additional points:
# Microsoft allegedly does a lot of usability research and they 
came up with the upcoming Metro design which relies on text 
instead of icons. # Regarding the English language - Icons are 
supposed to be universal so it saves money for companies to 
localize their software. Localized UIs do present a trade off in 
usability: It depends which terminology is more common, the local 
or the foreign (English). E.g. "print" is easy to translate and 
would be intuitive for non techies but "bittorent" probably isn't.