Rebuttal to Raymond—and On Playing Both Sides of the Fence
John Gruber of Daring Fireball tends to write rather interesting articles. Usually there are quite a few points on which I disagree with him, but I read his stuff from time to time anyway.
“Ronco Spray-On Usability“, however, is not such an article. I think he’s really said what needs to be said about Open Source “usability”—the problem is not exactly the way Eric Raymond puts it—it’s much deeper than that. The problem is that there is no fundamental respect for Usability Design from the very beginning. Open Source developers seem to think of it as window dressing. It’s so so much more than that.
This is a topic Temas and I have talked about quite a bit, what with us being the rejected losers of the Open Source IM client community. In particular, I agree with choice quotes like this:
[Usability is] not something every programmer can learn. Most programmers don’t have any aptitude for UI design whatsoever. It’s an art, and like any art, it requires innate ability. You can learn to be a better writer. You can learn to be a better illustrator. But most people can’t write and can’t draw, and no amount of practice or education is going to make them good at it. Improved, yes; good, no.
This is what I try to tell people, but no, no one wants to believe me. It’s just window dressing—anyone can throw on a bit of window dressing. John goes on:
They have no respect for the fact that UI design is a special talent.
They have no respect for the fact the good UI design requires a tremendous amount of time and effort.
And, most importantly, they have no respect at all for real users. The idea that GUI software needs to be designed for “dumb users” — which is Raymond’s own term, and an indication of what he really means when he refers to dear old A.T. — is completely wrong.
Oh so true… oh so sad.. One tidbit which I really disagree with though:
Conversely, some people who are good UI designers aren’t programmers. But the rock stars are the guys who can do both, and they are few and far between.
This is the category that I consider myself to be in. I can do both. I really, deep down, believe that I can. I try explaining this to people, but no one ever gets it. My jobs are always programming jobs. They assume I want to write libraries and backend code and other things programmers love. I don’t want to be just a programmer—UI design is my dream.. a dream I’ve been studying and working toward for over 5 years now—but no one really seems to understand. I’m not a rock star at all, no one really cares.
Interview after interview, people tend to place me as a programmer, and I think when they finally find out I’m not just a programmer they kind of think I’m weird. The fact that I want to be both a usability designer and a programmer has lost me quite a few job opportunities this year, as far as I can tell. But it’s the truth of who I am and what I want to do—so I just have to stick to it and keep trying.
I used to be one of those silly people that thought background midis or iframes are cool. I thought uniqueness was all that to any design…but I was wrong. What’s important is what /others/ think, esp. the general audience of whatever you’re making.
Usability is the big guy here…thanks for taking me into that realm (:
and I accidentally cancelled my longer reply ): meh…
It’s really sad that when we attempt to “do it right” by having upfront design considerations we became shunned, for some reason or another. I really don’t know how many other projects have tried that, but it doesn’t seem like a lot. Maybe they all got shunned into hiding as well?
Usability should be the most important factor on the net today, but not usability alone, usability with efficiency. People should not be forced into what is convenient or easy for the programmer or designer.
The educator within reminds me to Keep It Simple. A graphical Windowed envirnoment that is personalizable and interactive is the standard for the personal computer, and should be for the Internet as well.
I really liked your post. I can relate to that whole “outcast” feeling. For me, though, it’s not so much that I want to be both a usability designer and programmer, rather that being a programmer is an unfortunate necessity in the world of Open Source usability, because you’re going to end up being the only one who will implement your ideas. I can do both, but I find myself extremely resentful that I have to.
A note about Eric Raymond: last year I had a conversation with him about the usability of Open Source. I told him that many usability designers recommend designing (or at least thinking about) the UI before backend stuff is written. ESR told me that if that’s what usability designers think, then they’re wrong. He was advocating for creating backends first and then plastering front ends on top of that later. Lo and behold, such a designed system bites him in the ass a year later when he can’t set up his printer.
If I had to give exactly one reason why the current user interface situation of Open Source sucks so badly, I think it would be Unix Cultural Bigotry, not openness of code.
Ilan, thanks for that anecdote. Unix Cultural Bigotry is indeed the problem.
[…] @ 18:45 I’ve written about ESR’s usability rant and then the excellent rebuttal to his rant by Daring Fireball. Now […]