The Smidgin

In software design and usability, it’s the little things that make a difference.  (For example, see this post on two secrets of Mac design.)  Sometimes the little things aren’t good, however, as I discovered with GMail today.

I was processing through my contacts and deleting those I don’t want.  I spent a while selecting all 123 contacts to delete and hit the delete key, only to receive this message:

When writing this function of the GMail interface, the developers should have considered that people would probably want to batch delete their contacts.  I specifically selected all of them to save time, rather than going through in little groups like I evidently should have.

It might seem picky, but this is the sort of thing that differentiates good software from great software.

The other day I was reminded that not everyone values features and version increases the way I do.  I was speaking with Tuppence about her IM client:

Me: though i need to update your GAIM
Tuppence: why?
Tuppence: why the desire for change?
Me: hmm… good point
Tuppence: Why can’t people be satisfied with old things that work just fine?

When I said “hmm… good point” it was dawning on me that not everyone values the newest version of a program as much as I do.  In fact, there’s a very large portion of the computer using world that is happy if the program is simple, stable, and does what they need it to.  It doesn’t need to change.

Then there are those of us who want to get a Thinkpad and  run Gentoo Linux on it for our next computer.  That should be proof enough that tinkering with new (or old) features is  enjoyable to us.

But, if you’re a developer, remember the rest of the world.  Remember all those people who don’t get a kick out of searching through preference panels for new options, trying out features they’ll never really use, or downloading alpha software.  Design for them too, and don’t be too disappointed if they don’t always buy your next version.