Ahhh, more Windows Vista bashing. Joel on Software has a post regarding the 15(!) ways a user could exit their Vista experience. The post is titled Choices = Headaches.
We librarians already know this. That’s why people love looking at the books behind the circulation desk that have just been checked in. Someone already made the choice to check out those books. It doesn’t matter if it was a bad choice, because sometimes just not having to make a choice is what is important! Do your book displays prevent people from having to make a choice? Are they as novel as the Yellow Books Display? Do you have 3 sub-menus though which your web users must drill down?
Still not convinced that choice can hurt and make people feel stupid? Take a look at this configuration of Firefox! Egads.
Comments
Great illustration–but that’s a milder version of one I read about roughly a year ago, where someone just added the toolbars that were being touted as must-haves, opened them all…and found that they had 1.5 inches (on a 17″ display) left for the browser window itself. Just one or two more toolbars and they could avoid that useless content space altogether, having a pure Process Browser: All tools, no destination.
what a way to increase productivity!
Some day an archeologist will try to decipher that message. Is there a Rosetta Stone?
Or look at the dock on a Mac. If you don’t know what the icons mean, you’re totally out of luck. I don’t even know where to begin when I stare at that thing.
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. :-p
My brain just had six-headed triplets, each head talking backwards in pig latin while brushing their teeth. Yep. They were born with teeth, too.