[ Thanks to Kelly
McNeill for this link. ]
“The software “wizard” is the single greatest obstacle to
computer literacy since the Mac. Their underlying assumption is
that the user is incapable of learning how to perform a task
and/or should be protected from certain decisions or information.
However justified those assumptions may be in other contexts, it is
wrong for programmers to code to them and doubly wrong for open
source programmers to do so.”
“If the game is mass appeal, the learning curve is your enemy.
People will use the best tool available that they can figure out
how to use. (“Best” is, of course, a whole other holy war.) If two
programs do the same general task and have the same feature sets,
each user will prefer the one that they find most intuitive. If you
want your product to be the most popular, you have to make it more
accessible to more people. The flattest learning curve wins.”
“The problem here is that everyone learns in their own way. What
one person fumbles with for days is another’s five second
challenge. The application programmer can either give up on part of
the target audience and cater to fewer users or he can simplify the
interface until anyone can use it. If we’re playing for money,
there’s no way we’re giving up market share.”