More uneducated thoughts about office software
This is all spautz's fault, as his comments on my post about Powerpoint made me start thinking more about what I want from my office-productivity software and problems with current systems.
First, thanks to my other complaint, I learned there is a keystroke set for sub/superscripting in MS Office programs. They are ctrl-shirt-- and ctrl-shift-+, respectively.
But that's just the tip of things. Spautz mentioned that most people do not use the quick keystrokes to change character properties. I would think most people would at least want to use the easy ones. He claims it's difficult to memorize them with all the complex combinations these days, but I don't think people actually use that many. Bold, italics, underline, maybe superscript and subscript, and you're good to go. He thinks most people who use keystrokes do so because they have command-line experience. This is not true for me. Back when Word Perfect was still popular, I got tired of repeatedly stopping my typing to move the mouse to select the formatting option I needed. So my dad got me one of the Word Perfect keystroke templates that fit around the keyboard, and I quickly learned all the relavent ones. These days, it's difficult to learn the keystrokes. If you choose Bold from the toolbar, you never learn that there is a faster method of applying the changes. I think that as time has gone on, the developers of office software have made it more difficult to learn the keystrokes. Perhaps this is because most people don't use them. But like it or not, keystrokes are a faster method, and we should have the opportunity to learn them.
I think that developers may think about accented characters incorrectly because countries that use accented characters have these characters readily accessible on the keyboard. In France, for example, you just hit a shift-like key and then another key to get e-accent-grave. So I can see how a developer might think we should have the same letter options. On the other hand, there are really only a handful of accents: ~, `, ', ^, .., cedille, etc. Since most of these accents can modify many letters, it makes more sense to allow users to select an appropriate accent for a chosen letter.
I wish that when you used an Office program for the first time, you had the opportunity to select settings that work best for you. OpenOffice uses many of the toolbar options present in MS Office not because they make sense, but because they're what people are used to. While this might work for many people, I would much prefer a slightly different system that made more sense, and I think the best time to make the changes is when the program is started for the first time. There are so many autocorrect features that seem to turn themselves on again no matter how many times I turn them off. I should not have to be clever to have a lowercase letter after a period.
Overall, I think the OpenOffice layout and toolbars make a lot more sense than the MS layout and toolbars.
Maybe my needs are just so different from those of most users that I'll never really be happy with any graphical program. I type virtually everything in LaTeX. LaTeX is a mark-up language. It's not particularly easy to use at first, but it is easy to get a pre-existing LaTeX document and go from there. You can basically change all the formatting and insert anything you want without having to screw around with character sets and alignment options. It automatically generates a Table of Contents, a List of Figures, a List of Tables, and a bibliography when you ask. You don't have to number and track equations and references. For the bibliography/references list, you can enter the information in practially any order you like by using fields (author = ...), and then select how you want the information to be displayed. For report-writing purposes, these features far outweigh the occasional need to check my handy desk reference about the command to use a certain symbol. Spautz may argue that I shouldn't need a desk reference. Maybe that's true, but if I were using traditional Office software, I would be spending a lot of time in the "help" window, trying to figure out why, for example, the text in my textboxes was always black when I specifically asked the program to make it yellow or how I can have a letter with an overbar.
Maybe my basic problem is that I'm too practical and look at everything through an engineer's feature-driven eye. I don't know how one distinguishes between a user-friendly program and one that does what you want it to do. I would imagine that a program can only be user-friendly if it meets your every need. LaTeX may seem a little scarier than the friendly, icon-laden Word at first, but its commands are typically more logical, at least for me. Want to include a lowercase beta? Just do $\beta$. What if you need a capital delta? That's $\Delta$. Math equation formatting is equally intuitive. And what if you want a table of contents? That's \tableofcontents. It compiles all your section headings (\section), subsections (\subsection), sections within subsections (\subsubsection), and so on, along with page numbers. I ask you, how long would it take to do a table of contents in Word? To me, this is usability. Let's get programs that do what we want them to do first, and then make them easier for newbies to use.
First, thanks to my other complaint, I learned there is a keystroke set for sub/superscripting in MS Office programs. They are ctrl-shirt-- and ctrl-shift-+, respectively.
But that's just the tip of things. Spautz mentioned that most people do not use the quick keystrokes to change character properties. I would think most people would at least want to use the easy ones. He claims it's difficult to memorize them with all the complex combinations these days, but I don't think people actually use that many. Bold, italics, underline, maybe superscript and subscript, and you're good to go. He thinks most people who use keystrokes do so because they have command-line experience. This is not true for me. Back when Word Perfect was still popular, I got tired of repeatedly stopping my typing to move the mouse to select the formatting option I needed. So my dad got me one of the Word Perfect keystroke templates that fit around the keyboard, and I quickly learned all the relavent ones. These days, it's difficult to learn the keystrokes. If you choose Bold from the toolbar, you never learn that there is a faster method of applying the changes. I think that as time has gone on, the developers of office software have made it more difficult to learn the keystrokes. Perhaps this is because most people don't use them. But like it or not, keystrokes are a faster method, and we should have the opportunity to learn them.
I think that developers may think about accented characters incorrectly because countries that use accented characters have these characters readily accessible on the keyboard. In France, for example, you just hit a shift-like key and then another key to get e-accent-grave. So I can see how a developer might think we should have the same letter options. On the other hand, there are really only a handful of accents: ~, `, ', ^, .., cedille, etc. Since most of these accents can modify many letters, it makes more sense to allow users to select an appropriate accent for a chosen letter.
I wish that when you used an Office program for the first time, you had the opportunity to select settings that work best for you. OpenOffice uses many of the toolbar options present in MS Office not because they make sense, but because they're what people are used to. While this might work for many people, I would much prefer a slightly different system that made more sense, and I think the best time to make the changes is when the program is started for the first time. There are so many autocorrect features that seem to turn themselves on again no matter how many times I turn them off. I should not have to be clever to have a lowercase letter after a period.
Overall, I think the OpenOffice layout and toolbars make a lot more sense than the MS layout and toolbars.
Maybe my needs are just so different from those of most users that I'll never really be happy with any graphical program. I type virtually everything in LaTeX. LaTeX is a mark-up language. It's not particularly easy to use at first, but it is easy to get a pre-existing LaTeX document and go from there. You can basically change all the formatting and insert anything you want without having to screw around with character sets and alignment options. It automatically generates a Table of Contents, a List of Figures, a List of Tables, and a bibliography when you ask. You don't have to number and track equations and references. For the bibliography/references list, you can enter the information in practially any order you like by using fields (author = ...), and then select how you want the information to be displayed. For report-writing purposes, these features far outweigh the occasional need to check my handy desk reference about the command to use a certain symbol. Spautz may argue that I shouldn't need a desk reference. Maybe that's true, but if I were using traditional Office software, I would be spending a lot of time in the "help" window, trying to figure out why, for example, the text in my textboxes was always black when I specifically asked the program to make it yellow or how I can have a letter with an overbar.
Maybe my basic problem is that I'm too practical and look at everything through an engineer's feature-driven eye. I don't know how one distinguishes between a user-friendly program and one that does what you want it to do. I would imagine that a program can only be user-friendly if it meets your every need. LaTeX may seem a little scarier than the friendly, icon-laden Word at first, but its commands are typically more logical, at least for me. Want to include a lowercase beta? Just do $\beta$. What if you need a capital delta? That's $\Delta$. Math equation formatting is equally intuitive. And what if you want a table of contents? That's \tableofcontents. It compiles all your section headings (\section), subsections (\subsection), sections within subsections (\subsubsection), and so on, along with page numbers. I ask you, how long would it take to do a table of contents in Word? To me, this is usability. Let's get programs that do what we want them to do first, and then make them easier for newbies to use.
posted by megan at
12:35 PM
1 Comments:
I don't think you were paying attention to what I said. First, I certainly don't think that LaTeX is for everyone, or even that it's a great, user-friendly program. It's just the best that's out there. And it really doesn't matter if it still isn't technically good in your eyes, because compared to everything else, it is awesome.
And you completely misinterpreted the last line. Here was my point. Let's say I want something that will play a bunch of different types of music, and someone gives me an iPod. Without a doubt, iPods are well-designed and usable. But it's worthless to me if I need to use it to play records. I think much of the Office software is the first way. I am saying that to have usable products, you have to offer what people want/need.
I am so tired of getting criticized for voicing MY opinion about what *I* want from software. I made it completely clear from my title, and reiterated throughout the post, that I am not an expert. I was talking about MY needs and what works for ME. You are always stressing how the key to HCI and HF is listening to people, but when I say what I think, you just tell me I'm wrong. I know that in general, you should design things to be usable from the start. I know that doing that can make programs that are easier for experts to use. But you know what? I don't know that I'm willing to wait that long. And I bet that if you asked most grad student/scientist types, they'd agree with me. That's what my informal survey of my colleagues reveals. These people just want products that work and that aren't completely impossible to figure out. Mahybe we're an edge case, but I think our opinion is still valid. It always seems to me that if we listened to you, we wouldn't even have LaTeX. Just something to consider...
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megan, at 1:21 PM
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