On Mon, Jun 14, 1999 at 10:34:25AM +0000, Gertjan Klein wrote: > >"The people who manage the creation of software-based products are > >typically > > either hostage to programmers because they are insufficiently > >technical, or they are > >all too sympathetic to programmers because they are programmers > >themselves." > > That is one of the main points of the entire book: that programmers > are the ones that design the user interface of programs. Programmers > have a very different view of computing that arbitrary users. They > subconsciously tend to assume that users of their programs have the same > view as they themselves have. I hear that attitude in the oft-heard > phrase "teach a man to fish...". Though true in itself, many people are > either not interested in or don't have the capacity to configure large, > complicated applications; they just want to type their letters, and do > the other stuff their bosses tell them to do. Cooper points out that the > interaction design should be geared towards the people actually using > the program, instead of the people that program it. Self-evident as this > may seem, it appears that this is hardly ever the case. In the case of debian (and of linux in general) it is worth noting that programmers are not doing this for a living but because they like it... For example, since I am almost never using X I would hardly be eager to make an X interface for my prog... Interface design is imho the most boring part, thats maybe why it is sometimes overlooked in free programs. Just my two cents. A lot of people like making shiny interface too but not everyone loves it. -Lex
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