With iA Writer we deliberately took that risk by: The downsides of trying to create a more efficient interface are that people will at first feel alienated, that it costs a lot to develop, and that its success is not guaranteed. (Mouse interaction is expensive due to its find-point-click model being less economical than keyboard interaction). This is why we tried to avoid mouse interaction in the drafting process as much as possible. The logical consequence is that the fewer manipulations required by an interface to achieve its goal, the better it works. What follows from this rule is that efficient user interfaces obey the basic rule of an interaction economy: Minimal input (“what you do”) with maximal output (“how it responds”).
The Interface is the way you accomplish tasks with a product, what you do and how it responds. You may call bullshit on whoever is trying to convince you that “ the absence of a feature is as a feature,” but however smart you are-you will have a hard time overthrowing Jef Raskin’s definition of the user interface: Building an app with fewer features is much harder than adding a bunch of settings and letting the user decide. The more you think about how you use your writing tool, the less energy you have to think about your writing. Absence of Features 1.1 Creating More Efficient Interfaces Now the only thing more difficult than creating a simple user interface is setting the price of your product… 1.
Of course, version 1.0 had some birth defects (1.01 is out now), but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive-with the exception of a few complaints, mostly about the absence of features and the price. We sold almost 5,000 copies in two weeks. It’s been two weeks since the launch of Writer for Mac, and it went off like a rocket.
0 kommentar(er)
