The real problem with the interface is that it is an interface. Interfaces get in the way. I don’t want to focus my energies on an interface. I want to focus on the job…I don’t want to think of myself as using a computer, I want to think of myself as doing my job.
-- Donald A. Norman The Art of Computer-Human Design p. 120, see e.g. here
I’m not sure what this quote means. Interfaces are often badly designed and get in the way a lot, and that’s definitely bad. But surely that’s a truism.
Does the quote mean the interface should map 1-to-1 to the reality of the thing it’s an interface for, not introducing new abstractions or complications for the user to learn?
Sometimes that is the right approach. Other times, an interface is good precisely because it simplifies a complex domain, even if at the loss of some power. I’m glad the now-universal ‘file explorer’ interface has a much simpler model than the underlying API. Except when I need to manage hardlinks or mountpoints or device files, in which case the interface gets in the way (and I switch to a different interface).
I don’t want to think of myself as using a computer, I want to think of myself as doing my job.
Many (most?) jobs which utilize computer interfaces exist because of computers, or have been radically transformed by them. These jobs’ purpose is to manipulate computers. Their interfaces allow a lot of design leeway, since the underlying computer system is also designed, often by the same people. UX designers often disagree about things like skeumorphisms, or about the use of UI metaphors that are familiar because of 1980s UI design and have nothing to do with the actual problem domain (like desktops). What would Norman say about this?
This suggests that the perfect interface is one that gets in the way as little as possible, that allows the user to do their job as easily as possible. The perfect interface does not trumpet its own glory with bells and whistles and graphical thingys—rather, the perfect interface gets as far out of the way as possible and just lets the user work.
This is an excellent quote… I had to write an essay last semester for one of my classes on how I would design my preferred interface, and I basically wrote my entire essay using this quote.
I agree with this sentiment, but also feel like in some sense the whole point of an interface is to provide clear limits on what can and cannot be done.
Analogies: if you had a primitive form of direct brain-to-computer interfacing going on, that would probably actually make it harder to keep a project under control, the design would drift too easily. If our senses accessed reality directly, without interpretation by the brain, the world would make much less sense and thinking would be much more difficult -and more metabolically expensive.
To unify these two views, I think that cases where interfaces “get in the way” are cases where the interface lacks clear limits, so either the user is trying to do something that cannot be done with the program and hasn’t been made aware of that or the user is trying to do something but does not know what tools to use or what to avoid doing in their attempt. Clear limits make the insides of an interface easier to understand and use in ways that fill the breadth of the interface’s potential.
I think that cases where interfaces “get in the way” are cases where the interface lacks clear limits, so either the user is trying to do something that cannot be done with the program and hasn’t been made aware of that or the user is trying to do something but does not know what tools to use or what to avoid doing in their attempt.
I wish interfaces could only fail in one way. There’s also the interface that keeps making you do some non-obvious thing, but not often enough to make it easy to remember, and the interface with the related problem of making it hard to figure out how to get it to do what you want.
-- Donald A. Norman The Art of Computer-Human Design p. 120, see e.g. here
I’m not sure what this quote means. Interfaces are often badly designed and get in the way a lot, and that’s definitely bad. But surely that’s a truism.
Does the quote mean the interface should map 1-to-1 to the reality of the thing it’s an interface for, not introducing new abstractions or complications for the user to learn?
Sometimes that is the right approach. Other times, an interface is good precisely because it simplifies a complex domain, even if at the loss of some power. I’m glad the now-universal ‘file explorer’ interface has a much simpler model than the underlying API. Except when I need to manage hardlinks or mountpoints or device files, in which case the interface gets in the way (and I switch to a different interface).
Many (most?) jobs which utilize computer interfaces exist because of computers, or have been radically transformed by them. These jobs’ purpose is to manipulate computers. Their interfaces allow a lot of design leeway, since the underlying computer system is also designed, often by the same people. UX designers often disagree about things like skeumorphisms, or about the use of UI metaphors that are familiar because of 1980s UI design and have nothing to do with the actual problem domain (like desktops). What would Norman say about this?
This suggests that the perfect interface is one that gets in the way as little as possible, that allows the user to do their job as easily as possible. The perfect interface does not trumpet its own glory with bells and whistles and graphical thingys—rather, the perfect interface gets as far out of the way as possible and just lets the user work.
I agree with this.
This is an excellent quote… I had to write an essay last semester for one of my classes on how I would design my preferred interface, and I basically wrote my entire essay using this quote.
I agree with this sentiment, but also feel like in some sense the whole point of an interface is to provide clear limits on what can and cannot be done.
Analogies: if you had a primitive form of direct brain-to-computer interfacing going on, that would probably actually make it harder to keep a project under control, the design would drift too easily. If our senses accessed reality directly, without interpretation by the brain, the world would make much less sense and thinking would be much more difficult -and more metabolically expensive.
To unify these two views, I think that cases where interfaces “get in the way” are cases where the interface lacks clear limits, so either the user is trying to do something that cannot be done with the program and hasn’t been made aware of that or the user is trying to do something but does not know what tools to use or what to avoid doing in their attempt. Clear limits make the insides of an interface easier to understand and use in ways that fill the breadth of the interface’s potential.
I wish interfaces could only fail in one way. There’s also the interface that keeps making you do some non-obvious thing, but not often enough to make it easy to remember, and the interface with the related problem of making it hard to figure out how to get it to do what you want.