Memory Muscle
At work I migrated workstations and laptops from Ubuntu MATE 16.04 to Debian 10. A technician mentioned that the NetworkManager nm-applet tool no longer showed the Edit Connections menu option.
I suggested a right-click. He tried that and was surprised to find the missing menu option.
Somewhere along the way the menu layout of NetworkManager changed.
Every person acclimates to the way a tool is designed. When tools are modified those changes disrupt the user’s memory muscle — a subconscious imprint of how something functions.
Software developers these days don’t seem to care. Software is their personal playground.
Users are told to read the change log.
Yeah, right.
A disruptive usability pain is when developers change an application’s behavior. That includes just about anything GTK that is influenced or controlled by GNOME developers with their goal of “simplifying” user interfaces.
Posted: Category: Usability Tagged: General
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