RE: Opinion: Worst interface ever.

["Paul D. Robertson" <paul () compuwar net>]

On Tue, 5 Jul 2005, Eugene Kuznetsov wrote:

> I am not familiar with the WatchGuard interface, but I will say one general
> thing in their defence -- this stuff is harder to do than it seems.

Sure, but while the old interface was ugly, it was intuitive- and
consistency is important.

> For every user like you, who's annoyed about the redesign, there's another
> one who demanded that the UI be reworked in the first place: to make it more
> intuitive for his preferred configuration, or to add options for new

Sure, when a vendor goes from "intuitive and simple" to "where the heck is
this thing failing, all the things the manual says are done?" I think it's
bad.

> features. I'll even go out on a limb and bet $5 that somewhere in the first
> 5 minutes of your ordeal, you took a wrong turn, and it all went downhill
> from there. Had you taken a different path, it would've all been good.

One of my coworkers had the same issue, so I'm guessing that it's not all
that intuitive where that turn was.  It's frustrating to go from "hey,
this product is good" to "hey, this revision is bad!"

I'm really starting to dislike the "interface can't run locally on the
device" stuff when coupled with "won't log on the device."

> So take this as a vendor perspective: it's not easy, especially since
> customer requirements are increasingly diverging. More features --> more
> complexity.

Hey, I didn't ask for more features, someone's marketing department did!
I'm mostly upset at myself for assuming that the new version would be an
incramental improvement of the old, not something that two of us had
serious issues with despite following the instructions in the manual.

I'm also going to add a new vendor test to my criteria- if I can't get
read-only access to the support site without a login, that vendor's off my
list.

Paul
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul D. Robertson      "My statements in this message are personal opinions
paul () compuwar net       which may have no basis whatsoever in fact."
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