about time

I'm pretty tough on products that have bad user interfaces, especially technical products. For instance, within three weeks of getting a Comcast (Motorola) DVR, I gave everyone who spent more than two minutes with me a treatise on just how much more I preferred TiVo's interface. All I'm trying to do is watch TV for crying out loud, so why does Comcast think my remote control needs to look like a graphing calculator?

But the one interface I've always hated doesn't have much to do with technology -- or high technology, at least. It's the Dewey Decimal System. While it's great to have industry standards, there's no reason to force end users to know the ins and outs of those standards to benefit from them -- which is exactly what librarians have done for over a century. Looking for books about technology? Look for the 600 on the spine!

So I have to say it's about time a library bucked tradition and started organizing books under plain-English headings and printing plain-English subjects on the spines.

It reminds me of one of my favorite stories about another type of usable "interface": that of the footpaths at the University of Oregon, which were paved after paths naturally appeared in the grass where student and faculty walked the most.