www.MarkTAW.com/design/WhyIdontliketheInductiveu.html (printable version)
Why I don't like the Inductive user interfaceFirst read the article on Inductive User Interface on Microsoft's website (the link is in the sidebar).
I like the idea, but I'm not sure I agree with the philosophy.
I like the idea that they break up "user centered" design into discrete components, but I wonder if these components are *too* discrete.
* Even the idea of a 'process' seems linear and one dimensional, while tasks are often multi dimensional, something from process b influences process a. How do you model that in this methodology?
An example.... Hotmail
Someone mentioned that the UI to MS Money 2000 was better than the previous one, since user's pay the most attention to the top 20% of the screen, moving the most usable part to the title makes sense.
Of course, the UI to MS Money could've sucked to begin with so that any attention to UI would be an improvement. Being an MS Money user, I speak from experience.
Let's take the Hotmail interface as an example. It's a web based interface, which they say is often IUI based, and it's from the same company that MS Money is from. I can't check hotmail from here at work so I'm using my memory.
The Inbox lists e-mails. Clicking on the subject takes you to that e-mail. If you click on a checkbox you can delete those emails or block the addresses they came from, or put them into a different folder. You can also jump to a different folder, or perform various other tasks.
You can do a lot of things on this one screen, and lots of people use hotmail that don't even own a computer, so I'm guessing it's fairly usable.
Under the Inductive User Interface, you would have a screen called
Click the e-Mail You Wish to Read
and that would be all you could do on that screen, except maybe jump to another section.
To move an e-mail to a folder you'd click on a link on the left side that would take you to:
Select the e-Mail(s) You Wish to Move
check, check, check, click [Next]...
Select the Folder You Wish to Move these e-Mails To
click.
You Have Placed (5) e-Mails in [Why IUI Sucks]
click on "done" and it returns you to the Click the e-Mail You Wish to Read screen.
This is exactly like the Manage Your Accounts / Select The Account You Wish to Somethingorother example - they didn't talk about the 50 screens the had to add for the functions they took off of that page.
They also, in the article, don't talk about how many other improvements they may have made to the UI that would make it more usable that may have affected their test results.
Another example, taking a bath
I'm guessing a user model can accomodate more than one idea on a screen at a time. Let's take a mundane example.... A shower. Most showers have a bottom spout, a top spout (perhaps with massage) hot and cold water controls, and some sort of stopper so you can take a bath.
A digitally controlled shower created using IUI:
Select The Mode You Wish To Use
click bath
What Type of Bath Would You Like To Take
click relaxing
Select the Temperature You'd Like for Your Bath
Normally I'd have one "panel" of controls, I'd plug up the drain, select the bottom spout (usually pre-selected) and turn the knobs all in one interface. Microsoft thinks I'm too dumb to do this.
How about modelling software on the Real World?
Someone posted a message about many blue collar workers not speaking english as their first language and not being familar with computers, which I actually didn't notice and didn't respond to.
How about this idea.
The IUI violates the 'real world' model of objects. The fact is we are able to pick up a letter, open it, throw it in the trash, put it in a filing cabinet, respond to it, etc. without going to a different read mail desk or some such concept. We can turn on our radios and select stations or play CD's without going to different devices to do this. Even component systems tend to be organized in one area of the room.
The IUI interface actually reqiures more thought on the part of the user than a different well designed interface. After a while, for example, we can change the stereo in our cars while driving. I can do this without looking on a rental car in a matter of hours, less if I'm driving in a city with lots of red lights, or on an empty highway with few cars.
Don Norman and the BMW Series 7
Donald Norman in his book "The Design of Everyday Things" much quoted by Joel in his UI book is a big proponent of having one button per function rather than one button multiple functions. In software this would be akin to having the same buttons on the screen in the same place consistently.
Witness the 7 series BMW that has a single knob that controls all sorts of things.
Every time you select something you have to look at the screen to see (a) what it did and (b) what your new options are. You have to re-orient yourself each time you do something, re-reading the title/intro paragraph. I can envision my mother sitting there, nose up reading through the bottom lens of her bifocals trying to figure out now what *this* screen does.
AHA! Why I Really Hate IUI
In fact, this is my real gripe about IUI.
EVERY ACTION YOU PERFORM REQUIRES YOU TO RE-ORIENT YOURSELF. It's like the center of the world changes every time you reach a new "page." You're always zoomed in, never getting an overview of the system. It's like reading this posting one letter at a time, and being forced to click to get to the next letter. You'd never be able to get a sense of the whole.
When you're selecting an e-mail to read, the whole program looks like a "select a program to read' program. When you're deleting e-mails, the whole program looks like a "select an e-mail to delete" program. You have no sense of hierachy, parallel functions, etc. Users are likely to only know about 10% of the functions in the program because:
Don't like Hotmail? How about Outlook
Someone posted a note refuting my Hotmail argument saying that in an application these clicks would be instantaneous. Also they pointed out the exaggeration to my bathroom analogy.
Take outlook for example, another e-mail program from Microsoft. Clicking on an e-Mail selects it and previews it. Dragging it to a folder moves it there. Double clicking opens it. Clicking reply opens a reply box, similarly Forward opens a forward box. One screen, multiple functions, yet countless people seem to be able to use it.
In IUI the folders on the left would be replaced with options such as "select an e-mail to delete" "select an e-mail to move" "select an e-mail to read" "select an e-mail to reply to" "select an e-mail to forward" "select an e-mail to mark important" " select an e-mail to mark unread" "select an e-mail to reply to all to"... okay I'm exaggerating.
Another example, setting the VCR
now that I think of it, I've been using interfaces like this for a long time, and I've always hated them. Setting the VCR to record for example.
Menu
(click on 2)
Select a day you would like to record
(click on 0)
Select the Channel you would Like to Record...
ARGGHHHH! Then going back in to change one variable.... "Oops, that was 7-9am not 7-8pm" means tabbing through the whole screen again, often being forced to re-confirm old selections rather than just clicking "next." (Though IUI would probably let you click "next" to get to the next step... hopefully it will be located in the exact same location on the sceen so I don't have to move the mouse at all to get to the next screen, and if it's at the bottom like it usually is I'm screwed because I have to scroll AND click.)
Someone invented VCR+ and made a lot of people very happy. I wonder what the UI for the TiVO is like...
"People decide what they're going to click on before they move their mouse, therefore you shouldn't hide options from them at the beginning." I'm paraphasing something I've heard numerous times, though I forget what the original source is. In IUI you're trying to push everything but the one thing you're focusing on to the side, and you can probably only put related functions on the same screen (which I believe is in the article), which means fairly unrelated options are really hidden from you.
Summary - they want to keep you ignorant
To summarize, IUI keeps you ignorant by not letting you get an overview. Even an intelligent user would be lost in, say, a financial application like MS Money. I have a previous version of MS Money and wanted to balance my debt. I like juggling lots of variables and seeing how they affect the whole, but the interface required me to go back two screens to select which credit card to put into the debt reduction planner, then go to the second screen to select how much money I wanted to put towards the debt, and go to the third screen to see what the impact was.
I would've much preferred a spreadsheet layout (like a much earlier windows 3.x version of Money I have) or like Excel, if I could figure out how to make it do RPN/compound interest, so I could juggle variables and see what affect they have on the whole without click through 2 screens just to change one thing.
Basically, I hate interfaces that hide things from me because they assume I'm stupid. Just get me do what I need to do.
Why I Love my Alarm Clock
Here's another real life example, my alarm clock lets you maintain 2 seperate alarms. There's a 3 way switch "Alarm 1, Alarm 2, Both." To set one alarm, select it on the 3 way switch and hold the "Set Alarm" button and push the up/down buttons (there's four, fast and slow up and down).
Another 3 way switch for Radio, Off, Alarm
Now to set both alarms:
IUI:
To change from both alarms to alarm 1
IUI:
At 7 am changing the alarm for 15 minutes later.... I can't imagine doing it in IUI. I would actually have to look at the screen and read the options. Why? because the same button would be doing 2 different things. It would make me THINK about it, thinking would be bad at 7am because it would wake me up.
Even if it's not much more clicking, it's a lot more thinking, it's even a lot more words in my description, and you constantly have to re-orient yourself because the old variables went away to be replaced by new ones in the same place.
Holding Variables In Your Head that Aren't There
IUI claims that it's better because you're only focused on one thing at a time. I say it's worse because you're using the same space for multiple activities and you're forcing the user to re-orient themselves each time. IUI designers think that the old variables are instantly forgotten, but they're not. They linger in your mind, and you perhaps unconsciously try to figure out how the previous screen interacts with this one, and how this one will interact with the next screen, making your life even more difficult.
In traditional design you have 12 options on the screen. In IUI you have 4 options on 3 screens, and when you're looking at options 5-8 you're trying to figure out what they had to do with options 1-4, and what options 9-12 might be. This actually forces the user to think more, and confuses them considerably more than showing them the whole.
Getting lost in IUI, and in the real world
Another analogy would be getting directions. "You head down this road a ways, turn left at the old mobile station, go a ways more past a bunch of trees, then turn right at the new church. Then go past six streets, mine will be the third light, turn left there and go..." at this point I'm screaming "just show me on the map."
The person giving you the directions already has an internal map and can orient to it. Until you get that map, directions like these will make you nervous because you know one wrong turn will put you in an unfamiliar place without any way of re-orienting yourself. Turn right at the mobile station and you'll never figure out what you did wrong. You'll get to the mobile station, and even if you remember "I should've turned left" you're holding all the other variables in your head - the church, the six blocks, the three streetlights - in your head and do what I've done - turn back the way I came from, make a U turn and approach the whole thing again because I can't think about whether a right and a u-turn makes a left without forgetting which way I'm supposed to turn at the church.
fin
PS, I use my alarm like this:
I set Alarm 1 for 7:30
I set Alarm 2 for 7:44
Alarm 1 goes of 7:30... snooze
Alarm 1 goes off 7:39... snooze - 10 minutes later
Alarm 2 goes off 7:44... snooze - 5 minutes later
Alarm 1 goes off 7:48... I get up - 4 minutes later
I'm NOT a morning person.
Update 30 of July 2002: Found this bit by the author of the IUI paper on Microsoft.com. It's nice to see some of the backround. Funny how his example breaks the IUI as specified in the paper.
For example, the Home version of Microsoft Windows XP contains a inductive control panel called "User Accounts" that lets a person (often a parent) create and manage the user accounts of multiple people (e.g., family members) sharing a single computer.
Err. Shouldn't that be "Select an Account to Edit" and not "User Accounts" which is does not tell you what you're supposed to be doing on the page? Then on the right nav there should be "Delete Account" and "Add Account."
It would seem they don't mind stepping through short page sequences if each page presents a very simple decision; they may ultimately save more time than what they might hypothetically spend in a less modal interface that was more difficult to apprehend.
This is where I would imagine the IUI really shines. Something that you do so infrequently that you're likely to have forgotten how to do it by the next time you get there.
Microsoft's Guidlines for Inductive User Interface
The original thread on the Joel on Software Forum
Message Board: http://www.marktaw.com/forum/list.php?f=1
page first created on Saturday, April 27, 2002
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