Let's Kill the Hard Disk Icon

Kellym writes "The desktop metaphor is under attack these days. Usability experts and computer scientists like Don Norman, David Gelernter and George Robertson have declared the metaphor "dead." The complexities blamed on the desktop metaphor are not the fault of the metaphor itself, but of its implementation in mainstream systems. The default hard disk icon is part of the desktop metaphor. And the icon is the cause of the complexity created by the desktop"

Re:Computer Home

[Johnny00]

Reminds me of something [telecommander.com] Microsoft once did.

The desktop is the whole computer

[Kennu]

I think a lot of people are missing the fact that the desktop does not represent a hard disk or a folder; it represents the _whole_ computer.

The problems arise when operating systems adopting the desktop have to support parallel legacy concepts, such as Windows with it's multiple X:\ roots or Mac OS X with the Unix directory tree.

The cleanest desktop implementation has always been the old MacOS (=9), where the desktop is consistently presented as the root of everything. Through it you can access hard disks and other storage quite naturally, and you never get lost.

Re:/complexity/ ??

[gfxguy]

My SO can pick up a remote control, figure it our without the manual, and operate the TV, VCR, and Hi-Fi. So can my parents. They are happy to set the message on their answering machine, program numbers into their phones, do combo-cooking with the microwave and generally use your average household technology without instruction ... but not a computer.

Aahh...but my parents had a horrible time when we got our first VCR (I was about 15 back then). Of course, I could read the manual and figure it out, but it was all too complicated for them.

20 years later, where the "interface" for VCRs really hasn't changed, my parents to just fine, and can pretty much use any VCR.

The problem with computer GUI's is they haven't settled for 20 years - and people like these guys who come along and keep wanting to "create a new paradigm" (mark that off on your buzz-word bingo) are screwing things up - if it doesn't stay consistent for any length of time, no one will get accustomed to it.

I agree about the pictures on the buttons, though. We had an application from some developers that had a horrible interface. When we were asked for suggestions, I suggested they improve the interface, and suggested they looked at that particular OS's interface guide. Not only did they not look at the guide, but we ended up with a real pretty GUI where the pictures had virtually nothing to do with the functions - unless you were the programmer. We might have lived with it if they had tool-tips, but if you need to rely on tool-tips, maybe the icon isn't so good - why don't you just label the button with the tool tip?

A matter of coping with complexity

[tarsi210]

From the: Well,-can't-you-handle-chewing-gum-and-dancing? dept.

The idea behind this article is that there are too many spatial configurations in a operating system for a user to be able to cope and concentrate on information flowing from one to the other. The desktop represents one type of spatial configuration (limited movement, space, etc.) while the hard disk icon represents another (limitless space, movement beyond the edges, etc.). The author proposes that it is asking too much of users to be able to make these spatial conversions.

Now, let's think about this. Don't you already do spatial conversions all the time? You think of a house, that's in 3D, usually (in your mind). You go to an architecht, he draws the house in 2D (on paper), maybe with some 3D perspectives, but still in 2D. You take this to a contractor, and they construct the house in 3D! This is spatial conversion, folks. We all learned to do it as children, converting the spaces of normal paper into 3D houses, turkeys, etc....whatever those projects were in 3rd grade.

It still comes down to a learning curve and ability scale. Most everyone will learn a system faster if they don't have to do spatial conversions. Therefore, for the ease of learning, such a "desktop only" system might be pertinent. However, computers are complex things and are expected to encompass a lot of different information in a lot of different configurations. Limiting yourself to one spatial relationship will only limit you in the end as to what you can store, manage, and organize. Having both the desktop and the hard drive paradigms to manage information will result in the ability to store the vast amounts of different information available.

Re:man and info

[Phil Gregory]

It's not that they wanted to reinvent itthat's a probelem; that would have been survivable. It's that info is just plain an abomination. It seems to be an "emacs everywhere" notion. It's a pain to navigate, counter-intuitive, and the type of thing that could only have come out of the emacs or redmond mentalities.

Indeed. I'm a heavy Emacs advocate, and I think that the FSF's info viewer sucks. A lot. Fortunately, there exists a program named pinfo [gliwice.pl] that browses info files in a very nice, lynxlike manner. I recommend it to anyone who needs to look at info files.

--Phil (And, for Debian users, just 'apt-get install pinfo')