Our engineering bias make us think too literally some times. Let's stay scientific but use the designer hat instead of the mathematician hat. I know is for the web, but don't you have the feeling that you can design an experiment in a way that will converge to the same usability principles? There are things in Krug's way to document the experiment that could have the same degree of validity even for hardware devices! Don't make me think, as usability principle, is the most generous thing you can do for the user. When you do that, what you are also doing is saving the user's neocortex energy to solve other problems (their social, environmental or personal problems). Is how you help them to change their worlds. That's the closest thing to your mission accomplished. Cheap idea for us: 1. Design a simple experiment. And yes, simple for them is not the same as simple for you! 2. One morning per month (maybe that's too much, one every 3 months would be a huge leap forward) 3. Take 3 or 4 computer science students unfamiliar to Pharo, I'll say that's the adequate audience 4. Bribe them to participate with a cappuccino with croissants or something 5. During the experiment, ask them what are you thinking now every time their flow is interrupted 6. Discover their assumptions. Don't explain. Listen! (and document). Take notes like crazy* 7. Don't panic by overwhelming issues. Discuss with colleagues or publish in a private wiki for the team or something 8. Decide what are the 3 most blocking entry barriers and show that to the team. We need to discuss the discovered issues do, together, something about them *Your mission here is not educate the guys, only to document which are their assumptions. You might feel frustrated by the state of education today or the poor preparation they had or the bad influence of industry vices or how anxious and distracted young people are these days. Nothing about that should change your mission of discovering their assumptions, so the best is to ask them, listen, document and share with maintainers. On Jan 3, 2014, at 7:48 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

Thanks for bringing this up.

Yes, we should care about usability.

And I agree that usability is attainable as long as you approach it with consistent discipline. It's similar to designing code: you start asking questions, figure out what the right questions are, and then stick to it.

I like Steve Krug's Don't make me think book. However, please keep in mind that the lessons in the book apply specifically to the web. An environment like Pharo should not obey exactly the same things.

But, as Esteban says, let's focus on the future, and keep usability high in our list of concerns. Even if we might not know how to do it now, simply sticking with it will make us better in the long run.

Cheers, Doru

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Sebastian,

I feel your pain :)

we are aiming to focus Pharo 4 in “modularisation and tools”, to enhance what we have currently. Now… one of the biggest problems we have is that people is so used to the old tools that they don’t even realise that we can do a lot better. And most possible some people will react violently to any change… but well, we will do it anyway, with your help. Let’s all together build a better IDE for the future :)

Esteban

On 03 Jan 2014, at 01:13, Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

...

Guys is no mystery that we have some issues with UI.

It's not so bad either, we have many things that are light years ahead of other but we consistently miss some really basic stuff from the Human-Computer-Interactcion point of view.

The community is biased towards engineering and unbalanced regarding to design so this is no surprise (why this happens is another interesting conversation).

UI is not that hard when you know what to pay attention to but we need first to decide if we care about usability and the developer experience at all.

This fantastic talk from Steve Krug exposes what's the least you can do for the usability of any software.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/steve-krug-on-the-least-you-can-do-about...

sebastian

o/

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

I felt we didn't disagree but wanted open that line of conversation because it sounds heathy :D I agree the tests for our tool aren't going to be the same as for many web sites/apps. One thing is to try to create a great experience for woman buying shoes in the web and another is computer science students/enthusiasts hacking something useful in a few hours. After all, smalltalk is all about bringing usability to software-making. All about the creative spirit easily telling machines how to behave In our ideal, easily = creative flow On Jan 3, 2014, at 10:07 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

Hi Sebastian,

I think you read my mail too literally :).

We do not disagree. My comment about "Don't make me think" is that what applies for the web is not quite the same as for a programming environment. For example, on the web, it is more profitable to assume that everyone is a newcomer, while in a tool where you spend a lot of time this is not necessarily the case.

That said, of course, doing usability experiments is indeed useful (and hard to grasp :)). I did not argue against that. It would be great to start any effort in this direction.

Cheers, Doru

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 12:49 PM, Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote: Our engineering bias make us think too literally some times.

Let's stay scientific but use the designer hat instead of the mathematician hat.

I know is for the web, but don't you have the feeling that you can design an experiment in a way that will converge to the same usability principles?

There are things in Krug's way to document the experiment that could have the same degree of validity even for hardware devices!

Don't make me think, as usability principle, is the most generous thing you can do for the user. When you do that, what you are also doing is saving the user's neocortex energy to solve other problems (their social, environmental or personal problems). Is how you help them to change their worlds. That's the closest thing to your mission accomplished.

Cheap idea for us:

1. Design a simple experiment. And yes, simple for them is not the same as simple for you! 2. One morning per month (maybe that's too much, one every 3 months would be a huge leap forward) 3. Take 3 or 4 computer science students unfamiliar to Pharo, I'll say that's the adequate audience 4. Bribe them to participate with a cappuccino with croissants or something 5. During the experiment, ask them what are you thinking now every time their flow is interrupted 6. Discover their assumptions. Don't explain. Listen! (and document). Take notes like crazy* 7. Don't panic by overwhelming issues. Discuss with colleagues or publish in a private wiki for the team or something 8. Decide what are the 3 most blocking entry barriers and show that to the team. We need to discuss the discovered issues do, together, something about them

*Your mission here is not educate the guys, only to document which are their assumptions. You might feel frustrated by the state of education today or the poor preparation they had or the bad influence of industry vices or how anxious and distracted young people are these days. Nothing about that should change your mission of discovering their assumptions, so the best is to ask them, listen, document and share with maintainers.

On Jan 3, 2014, at 7:48 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote:

...

Thanks for bringing this up.

Yes, we should care about usability.

And I agree that usability is attainable as long as you approach it with consistent discipline. It's similar to designing code: you start asking questions, figure out what the right questions are, and then stick to it.

I like Steve Krug's Don't make me think book. However, please keep in mind that the lessons in the book apply specifically to the web. An environment like Pharo should not obey exactly the same things.

But, as Esteban says, let's focus on the future, and keep usability high in our list of concerns. Even if we might not know how to do it now, simply sticking with it will make us better in the long run.

Cheers, Doru

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Sebastian,

I feel your pain :)

we are aiming to focus Pharo 4 in “modularisation and tools”, to enhance what we have currently. Now… one of the biggest problems we have is that people is so used to the old tools that they don’t even realise that we can do a lot better. And most possible some people will react violently to any change… but well, we will do it anyway, with your help. Let’s all together build a better IDE for the future :)

Esteban

On 03 Jan 2014, at 01:13, Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

...

Guys is no mystery that we have some issues with UI.

It's not so bad either, we have many things that are light years ahead of other but we consistently miss some really basic stuff from the Human-Computer-Interactcion point of view.

The community is biased towards engineering and unbalanced regarding to design so this is no surprise (why this happens is another interesting conversation).

UI is not that hard when you know what to pay attention to but we need first to decide if we care about usability and the developer experience at all.

This fantastic talk from Steve Krug exposes what's the least you can do for the usability of any software.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/steve-krug-on-the-least-you-can-do-about...

sebastian

o/

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

On 03 Jan 2014, at 12:56, J.F. Rick <self@je77.com> wrote:

As somebody coming from the HCI side, rather than the software engineering / programming language side, I too value usability. But, it seems to me that you first do the major changes and then slowly hone to get usability right. I find lots of small little usability bugs in Pharo 3.0 but I assume that those are mainly due to the tools getting majorly upgraded right now. I'm not sure how to report these tiny usability bugs. If someone can chime in on the correct way to report these, I'd be willing to report them. For instance, I notice that when I am writing code in the browser and click to another method, I am no longer warned that my code will be lost. It is simply lost. That's a basic usability thing: Prevent costly errors. But, I assume that this is just a matter of Nautilus still getting refined. So, it may not even be worth mentioning.

Please, report them in the tracker, under “Usability” project (I just created it :P ). now… in the case of the lost changes in Nautilus: it was a bug. Bah… it was an attempt to enhance the edition that didn’t work (for now). So it is reverted, latest versions should not have that problem.

My main contribution right now is being an early adopter of Athens and sending any weaknesses I find to the list. Athens is new and still has lots of little bugs. At the same time, it is ambitious and a major step forward for Pharo if it can be fully integrated. Of course, these little bugs will get taken care of as Athens is more widely used but part of the excitement of Pharo is that it is evolving. There are some areas where usability honing can be useful but others were the software engineering has to settle down before the honing can start.

Cheers,

Jeff

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:48 AM, Tudor Girba <tudor@tudorgirba.com> wrote: Thanks for bringing this up.

Yes, we should care about usability.

And I agree that usability is attainable as long as you approach it with consistent discipline. It's similar to designing code: you start asking questions, figure out what the right questions are, and then stick to it.

I like Steve Krug's Don't make me think book. However, please keep in mind that the lessons in the book apply specifically to the web. An environment like Pharo should not obey exactly the same things.

But, as Esteban says, let's focus on the future, and keep usability high in our list of concerns. Even if we might not know how to do it now, simply sticking with it will make us better in the long run.

Cheers, Doru

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Esteban Lorenzano <estebanlm@gmail.com> wrote: Hi Sebastian,

I feel your pain :)

we are aiming to focus Pharo 4 in “modularisation and tools”, to enhance what we have currently. Now… one of the biggest problems we have is that people is so used to the old tools that they don’t even realise that we can do a lot better. And most possible some people will react violently to any change… but well, we will do it anyway, with your help. Let’s all together build a better IDE for the future :)

Esteban

On 03 Jan 2014, at 01:13, Sebastian Sastre <sebastian@flowingconcept.com> wrote:

...

Guys is no mystery that we have some issues with UI.

It's not so bad either, we have many things that are light years ahead of other but we consistently miss some really basic stuff from the Human-Computer-Interactcion point of view.

The community is biased towards engineering and unbalanced regarding to design so this is no surprise (why this happens is another interesting conversation).

UI is not that hard when you know what to pay attention to but we need first to decide if we care about usability and the developer experience at all.

This fantastic talk from Steve Krug exposes what's the least you can do for the usability of any software.

http://blip.tv/business-of-software/steve-krug-on-the-least-you-can-do-about...

sebastian

o/

-- www.tudorgirba.com

"Every thing has its own flow"

-- Jochen "Jeff" Rick, Ph.D. http://www.je77.com/ Skype ID: jochenrick