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Free software scares normal people

(danieldelaney.net)
917 points cryptophreak | 9 comments | 30 Oct 25 15:07 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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squeedles ◴[30 Oct 25 16:12 UTC] No.45761639[source]▶
Good article, but the reasoning is wrong. It isn't easy to make a simple interface in the same way that Pascal apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a shorter one.

Implementing the UI for one exact use case is not much trouble, but figuring out what that use case is difficult. And defending that use case from the line of people who want "that + this little extra thing", or the "I just need ..." is difficult. It takes a single strong-willed defender, or some sort of onerous management structure, to prevent the interface from quickly devolving back into the million options or schizming into other projects.

Simply put, it is a desirable state, but an unstable one.

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PaulDavisThe1st ◴[30 Oct 25 16:35 UTC] No.45761946[source]▶
Good points, but to add to the sources of instability ... a first time user of a piece of software may be very appreciative of its simplicity and "intuitiveness". However, if it is a tool that they spend a lot of time with and is connected to a potentially complex workflow, it won't be long before even they are asking for "this little extra thing".

It is hard to overestimate the difference between creating tools for people who use the tools for hours every day and creating tools for people who use tools once a week or less.

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1. SoftTalker ◴[30 Oct 25 16:52 UTC] No.45762164[source]▶
Right. For most people, gimp is not only overkill but also overwhelming. It's hard to intuit how to perform even fairly simple tasks. But for someone who needs it it's worth learning.

The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting.

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2. thaumasiotes ◴[30 Oct 25 17:01 UTC] No.45762260[source]▶
> The casual user just wants a tool to crop screenshots and maybe draw simple shapes/lines/arrows. But once they do that they start to think of more advanced things and the simple tool starts to be seen as limiting.

Silksong Daily News went from videos of a voiceover saying "There has been no news for today" over a static image background to (sometimes) being scripted stop-motion videos.

3. LiquidSky ◴[30 Oct 25 17:51 UTC] No.45762907[source]▶
But the linked article addresses that. They're not advocating for removing the full-feature UI, they just advise having a simple version that does the one thing (or couple of things) most users want in a simple way. Users who want to do more can just use the full version.
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4. PaulDavisThe1st ◴[30 Oct 25 18:21 UTC] No.45763305[source]▶
Users don't want "to do more". They want to do "that one extra thing". Going from the "novice" version to the "full version" just to get that one extra thing is a real problem for a lot of people. But how do you address this as a software designer?
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5. LiquidSky ◴[30 Oct 25 18:26 UTC] No.45763389{3}[source]▶
Progressive disclosure? If you know your audience, you probably know what most people want, and then the usual next step up for that "one extra thing". You could start with the ultra-simple basic thing, then have an option to enable the "next step feature". If needed you could have progressive options up to the full version.
6. devilbunny ◴[30 Oct 25 19:55 UTC] No.45764550{3}[source]▶
I'm not a coder, so I'm not going to pretend that this solution is easy to implement (it might be, but I wouldn't assume so), but how about allowing you to expose the "expert" options just temporarily (to find the tool you need) and then allow adding that to your new "novice plus" custom menus? I.e., if you use a menu option from the expert menu X number of times, it just shows up even though your default is the novice view.
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7. sjamaan ◴[31 Oct 25 05:59 UTC] No.45768840{3}[source]▶
I don't know if this works well in general, but for example Kodi has "basic", "advanced" and several progressively more advanced steps in between for most of its menus. It hides lots of details that are irrelevant to the majority of users.
8. cestith ◴[31 Oct 25 18:00 UTC] No.45774836{4}[source]▶
That’s harder than static menus, but it’s not really anything harder once you have customizable hot list menus.
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9. devilbunny ◴[01 Nov 25 00:56 UTC] No.45778339{5}[source]▶
It seemed that way to me but I have done enough work with computers (I am on HN, after all) to know that things people in general think should be easy often are not, and things they think are hard may be simple. Thanks.