[TYPO3-hci] BE vs FE

[Waldemar Kornewald]

On 8/2/06, JoH <info at cybercraft.de> wrote:
> Usually there are 3 ways of learning all the things you want to do:
>
> 1) trial and error based on former experiences
>     depending on your personal brainpower this will be more or less time
> consuming

Yes, it is, but that's what should work for most users. You always
have to try, but you can use logical reasoning to "guess" how
something should work. Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to guess
how to add news items, for example.

But it's not only that. In the BE you get an interface with lots of
buttons and the page buttons in the left column don't relate to the
page view on the right. Somehow in the middle TYPO3 has the site tree,
so you get the impression that the buttons on the left don't mean
different display modes for the selected page, but instead affect the
display mode of the site tree. IOW, the further to the right you go
the more specific should an action become. Don't move actions for the
right column into the left column.
Another example: the page view has buttons for adding a record below
another record. Those buttons strangely appear *above* the record's
contents after which the new record will be placed.

Summary:
Buttons should (almost?) always be moved to the location where the
action will take place.
There are many details that make you wonder what will happen when you
click on something or how to solve a task. Without bubble-help you'd
be totally lost. That makes trial-and-error very difficult.

In an intuitive interface trial-and-error will get you very far. Of
course, it *cannot* replace a manual, but the goal is to not have to
read the manual for *basic* every-day tasks. Currently, this is
impossible. But this doesn't mean it can't be fixed (e.g. by
reorganizing the interface, even without removing/changing any
features).

A real-world example:
The majority of users is able to use MS Word, Excel, and Powerpoint
*without* having read *any* manuals (and these are your helicopter
apps!). Sometimes you have to lookup the help for an advanced feature,
but most users don't even do that. For their simple needs the
interface is intuitive enough to get the job done. If every MS Office
user needed training MS wouldn't be so successful.

Another example:
Most people don't have a problem with using MS Windows. Its interface
is acceptable for trial-and-error. But at my university we have
Linux+KDE and when we (the students) tried to print a document for the
first time we failed miserably! Why? Because the interface required to
enter the printing command (lpr or whatever there is), for example.
And the printing dialog was so overloaded that nobody could get used
to it. That's an interface that doesn't work for trial-and-error. It
only works for people reading manuals.

So, let's make the interface more intuitive by supporting
trial-and-error (trial-and-success! ;).

Bye,
Waldemar Kornewald