Subject: GUI design precedents & market share
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Sun Aug 19 2001 - 14:04:42 CDT
I'm glad to see that people are looking at other comparable applications for
GUI precedents. This is a very Good Thing, because widely-used applications
help establish useful conventions for us to consider following.
However, when we're looking for precedents, all GUI apps are *not* created
equal. GUI toolkits tend to be very flexible, so it's possible for
well-intentioned GUI designers to come up with all kinds of bad ideas:
http://www.iarchitect.com/mshame.htm
The mere fact that *somebody* did something a particular way doesn't make it
a good precedent, especially if that product never got very many users (when
compared to its competitors).
In short, market share *does* matter here. Mature products that have been
out for a number of years with a massive or rapidly growing userbase are far
more likely to offer useful precedents. I'm not saying that any product is
perfect, but people do vote with their feet. ;-)
Thus, when I talk about desktop UIs, I mean Macintosh and Windows. When I
talk about desktop applications, I mean web browsers and word processors.
Thus, my list of the most widely-used and well-understood desktop precedents
to consider is ultra-short:
- IE
- Netscape
- Word
Yes, there are plenty of other interesting products in those categories, and
some may have UI innovations worth considering, but their relevance for our
target users is much harder to assess without usability lab feedback. [1]
I'm happy to hear about applications (such as NEdit or KOffice) which
arguably might have as big a userbase as we do -- more data is a Good Thing
-- but as design precedents, they pale in comparison to the three mega-apps
mentioned above.
Paul
[1] I want to stop beating this particular dead horse. There's no easy
substitute for the kinds of high-quality, and often surprising, feedback you
get from a *real* usability study. Anyone who thinks there is should learn
more about what usability labs are and how they work.
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