sweeping generalization. please post comments.
Ok, since I know only two, maybe three other people read this blog (and I'm not even sure about Matt), you're both required to answer with depth, breadth, insightfulness, sagacity, and at least two supratrisyllabic or otherwise obscure words.
We at my lab are in continuing dialogue with the people who develop our brain-looking-at software, and I’ve come to the obvious conclusion that increasing the flexibility of user interface is an unconditional positive. We have a program for viewing, editing, and doing all kinds of crazy shit with brain pictures, and the interface is a very important aspect considering the end users will spend half of their careers using this program to draw shit and look at shit. Thus, the developers have wisely recruited us, the über end users, to help design the interface. There are certain things that they are willing to personalize, e.g. window size, preferred zoom level, intensity gradients, etc., but every time I suggest that simple Editing tools such as “apply” and “draw” and “left” and “right” be customizable, retorting that this could only lead to incompatibility between end users. They are correct that it would be slightly harder for me to teach a new user to use the Default buttons when I have changed all of mine to a completely different configuration, but consider the possibilities! With the right tools, I could use a joystick, a tablet PC, or even a Wii to outline different cortices, measure hippocampal volumes, and set seed points for tractography (i.e. draw shit on brain pictures), and these would be far superior to using a mouse as if it were Microsoft Paint or Photoshop. Even without these pipe dreams, what if I realize that the bulk of my work consists of moving my hand between the updownleftright arrows and, say, the “1” key. If I were able to re-designate “E,D,S,F” instead of “Up,Down,Left,Right,” I could increase my efficiency by quite a significant margin! It is absolutely true that a logical, powerful, and user-friendly default interface be created, and this is one of our developers’ most important jobs, but if it is possible to make the interface more flexible, how can this possibly be denied?
So, now that I’ve ranted, here’s the question:
Is increasing personalization of the user interface an unconditional good or do you know (or can you think) of any reasons/examples to restrain the end user’s personalization capacity?
We at my lab are in continuing dialogue with the people who develop our brain-looking-at software, and I’ve come to the obvious conclusion that increasing the flexibility of user interface is an unconditional positive. We have a program for viewing, editing, and doing all kinds of crazy shit with brain pictures, and the interface is a very important aspect considering the end users will spend half of their careers using this program to draw shit and look at shit. Thus, the developers have wisely recruited us, the über end users, to help design the interface. There are certain things that they are willing to personalize, e.g. window size, preferred zoom level, intensity gradients, etc., but every time I suggest that simple Editing tools such as “apply” and “draw” and “left” and “right” be customizable, retorting that this could only lead to incompatibility between end users. They are correct that it would be slightly harder for me to teach a new user to use the Default buttons when I have changed all of mine to a completely different configuration, but consider the possibilities! With the right tools, I could use a joystick, a tablet PC, or even a Wii to outline different cortices, measure hippocampal volumes, and set seed points for tractography (i.e. draw shit on brain pictures), and these would be far superior to using a mouse as if it were Microsoft Paint or Photoshop. Even without these pipe dreams, what if I realize that the bulk of my work consists of moving my hand between the updownleftright arrows and, say, the “1” key. If I were able to re-designate “E,D,S,F” instead of “Up,Down,Left,Right,” I could increase my efficiency by quite a significant margin! It is absolutely true that a logical, powerful, and user-friendly default interface be created, and this is one of our developers’ most important jobs, but if it is possible to make the interface more flexible, how can this possibly be denied?
So, now that I’ve ranted, here’s the question:
Is increasing personalization of the user interface an unconditional good or do you know (or can you think) of any reasons/examples to restrain the end user’s personalization capacity?
posted by FretlessC at 2:45 PM
1 Comments:
i for one cannot wait for the day when i can navigate a complicated 3d image with a wiimote. i think such a thing is long overdue. maybe the question of interface should be turned around; every user customizes himself an interface and the programs adapt to that...impossible to program? maybe. but still. anyway as long as there's a decent default interface i dont see why you wouldn't give the user options, especially stuff like remapping keys. you can always change it later.
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