There is always a fine balance between K.I.S.S. and giving users the flexibility they really need. I’ve been working on configuring a number of Windows Server machines over the last few days getting ready for a major shift in architectural design and philosophy that will happen tonight beginning at 6pm. On numerous occasions when dialing in the configuration I’ve found myself overwhelmed by the un-necessary complexity of the windows wizard interfaces and underwhelmed by the advanced setting panes of many services.

More important to creating a step by step wizard handling users through a myriad of options would be to provide a context specific wizard that takes into account not only what the user has click just now, but what they’ve clicked and interacted with before. The wizard could be setup to solve problems instead of provide functionality. Then for the battle hardened users who no longer require the training wheels that the wizards offer, provide simple automateable tools which let them configure the server quickly and export the settings for duplication!

Let the software learn the user through prior interaction and adjust itself accordingly. Finally, if there’s an option that a single word can’t explain, place the contextual help right there so the user doesn’t have to search Google to find out what it does! Before anyone thinks this is a problem unique to Windows, it’s not. Almost every single digital device (BlackBerry, OS X, Linux can’t we agree on a pseudo consistent path structure guys?) I’ve ever used has had a UI that could be improved through careful thought and extensive testing.

Tags: iis, interface, permissions, usability, windows, wizards

This entry was posted on Friday, October 24th, 2008 at 7:25 am and is filed under design, software, technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.