ellen ullman on so-called "user-friendly" interfaces, excerpted from an essay published in her book Life in Code:
Pretty graphical user interfaces are commonly called "user-friendly.'' But they are not really your friends. Underlying every user-friendly interface is a terrific human contempt.
The basic idea of a graphical interface is that it does not allow anything alarming to happen. You can pound on the mouse button all you want, and the system will prevent you from doing anything stupid. A monkey can pound on the keyboard, your cat can run across it, your baby can bang it with a fist, but the system should not crash.
To build such a crash-resistant system, the designer must be able to imagine — and disallow — the dumbest action. He or she cannot simply rely on the user's intelligence: who knows who will be on the other side of the program? Besides, the user's intelligence is not quantifiable; it's not programmable; it cannot protect the system. The real task is to forget about the intelligent person on the other side and think of every single stupid thing anyone might possibly do.
In the designer's mind, gradually, over months and years, there is created a vision of the user as imbecile. The imbecile vision is mandatory. No good, crash-resistant system can be built except if it's done for an idiot. The prettier the user interface, and the fewer odd replies the system allows you to make, the dumber you once appeared in the mind of the designer.
The designer's contempt for your intelligence is mostly hidden deep in the code. But, now and then, the disdain surfaces. Here's a small example: You're trying to do something simple, like back up files on your Mac. The program proceeds for a while, then encounters an error. Your disk is defective, says a message, and below the message is a single button. You absolutely must click this button. If you don't click it, the program hangs there indefinitely. So — your disk is defective, your files may be bolloxed up, and the designer leaves you only one possible reply: You must say, "OK."
fun side note… she wrote this in 1994.
