You click a link on a Web page. A small information window pops up. That window will, more often than not, have a “Click Here to Close Window” link on it.

Why?

Are there people out there browsing the Web that don’t know how to close a window? And, if so, wouldn’t the best course of action be to either have them ask someone to explain it to them, or—far more preferably—click around a little and find out that that little ‘X’ up in the corner of the window always closes said window?

We want computers and other high-tech things to be easy to use, but we don’t encourage users to explore and learn. Instead we encourage users to follow sets of never-to-be-deviated-from instructions to perform their tasks. If we’re going to do that, then what good is the GUI (Graphical User Interface)? Users can press Ctrl-F11 as easily as they can right-click on an icon and select the second option from the contextual menu. Well, sometimes it’s the third option, depending on whether or not your PC has the full accessories set of Office 97 installed. And, if you’ve got Office 2000, it’s not even shown unless you hover over the disclosure arrows for 2 seconds.

Imagine if we tried to teach babies that, to get from Location A to Location B, you lift your feet and put them down alternately six times. To get from Location A to Location C, you do the same but eleven times instead. How do you get from Location B to Location C? Well that’s easy — you follow the instructions to go from A to B, only reversed, of course. Then it’s simple to follow the instructions you have already been given to get from A to C.

And then, if they asked why it’s so complicated, we would tell them, “A walking enthusiast could have gone straight from B to C, but you don’t need to know about all that.”

The GUI was designed and engineered to be an empowering tool for “the rest of us”. I often think, though, that users are more scared of their computers today than they were twenty years ago, when a desktop “computer” was more likely a character based terminal. That’s a real shame.