Traditional applications focus on
their features. They offer lots of buttons and controls
to all users. The features may be confusing, or
worse, misleading and dangerous. Some applications
hide the “advanced” features behind
additional menu levels or multi level dialog boxes
and options, trading complexity for clutter.
The
features are static and do not adjust themselves
to the changing needs of the user. Even when the
buttons and controls do not apply to the task at
hand, the user can see them on the interface, and
can be confused by them, and may modify them, thinking
that they have some effect. Worse, when they are
hidden by layers of menus, they may later affect
the results without warning. Hidden or not, the controls
do not pertain to the task at hand, and create bugs
in other task – why show them in the first
place? See the difference. |