I want to read the follow up article where the challenge is to create a typesetted document. Bentleys criticism includes a single like Shell script invoking Latex.
If one of the words is slightly wrong, then you want it to be obvious.
If the Kentucky emergency operator adds an extra s they will see that it can’t be right. With the contiguous numbering the ambulance would be close, but probably still unable to find you.
The reason is explained in the front matter: “On one level, the data is simply a part of a mundane programming book. On another, each row represents immense suffering, lives lost, and in some cases amazing redemption and acceptance. In preparing for this dataset, I was deeply moved by a number of the statements and found myself re-evaluting my position on capital punishment. I hope that as we examine the data, you too will contemplate the deeper issues at play.”
I’d like to defend this guy. What he is doing is testing the trust mechanism.
If he went to Google and said ‘I think the trust mechanism is broken’ Google would say: ‘We know, that’s why we are pushing to move everyone to https.’
‘That isn’t enough. The padlock on the https page gives users a false sense of security.’
‘We don’t agree with that. Where’s your data?’
Google wouldn’t have accepted this. They have pushed full HTTPS hard, and suggesting that it has a negative consequence is unacceptable to them.
His experiment has proven the problem. How else could it have been demonstrated?
Ideally this would have been a large scale study done by academics. But this guy doesn’t have those resources. Nobody is going to fund this research.
The depressing thing here is that everybody is more interested in calling this guy a jerk than dealing with the issues he has raised.
Trust on the internet is broken. This guy did it with ease. Imagine what is being done by those who want to scam
millions?
But yeh, call him a jerk and then you can bury your unease beneath a big pile of outrage. It’s fine. Fine. He’s a jerk.
They have a hypothesis that states that users will be able to accomplish their task with less effort given strong signifiers.
They tested the hypothesis with two versions of the same page: one with weak signifiers and the other with strong signifiers. Both versions were created to _test_ the hypothesis. To either confirm or disprove the hypothesis.
They measured user eye movement activity and produced heat maps.
The heat maps confirm their hypothesis. With weak signifiers the users spent more time searching for the elements they wanted.
How is this not scientific?
Like all good science the conclusion is not 'flat bad, skewmorphism good.'
No, it says whatever you are doing ensure you provide users with signifiers.
So the final result is not a false dichotomy of flat vs non-flat but a useful set of guidelines: "Early pseudo-3D GUIs and Steve-Jobs-esque skeuomorphism often produced heavy, clunky interfaces. Scaling back from those excesses is good for usability. But removing visual distinctions to produce fully flat designs with no signifiers can be an equally bad extreme."
Does genetic variation rise in response to selective pressure?
It seems to me that this is a two stage process.
1. Variation is introduced at a fairly constant rate by mutation.
2. Variation is filtered out by natural selection based on how well it fits the environment.
The shocks occur when the environment changes so that the criteria for fit change and new variations survive for the long term.
So when we look at evolution we see a rate of change driven by the rate of mutation.
When we look at the long term we see a rate of change driven by the environment.