Author: Daniel Pope Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] [OT] OLPC XO
Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote: > If you only ever copy stuff that works, you’ll never do anything new.
That's like saying "if you only ever use words that exist in the
dictionary, you'll never write a book".
I know you don't mean that but if you're going to appeal to ridicule
I'll happily throw one back at you.
> Just because that’s what we’ve always done doesn’t mean it’s the best
> way.
It's inherently advantageous to copy what we've always done. It's
familiar, there are reference implementations, and less easy to see,
there's a wealth of information boiled down into those simple UI
conventions - a myriad of variations that didn't quite work as well and
have been avoided.
An innovative approach can be better, of course, but it's not a level
playing field. A novel approach has to do much, much better to overturn
the incumbent paradigm.
For example, it's been known decades that pie menus perform much better
than drop-down menus. But they aren't used much, and that's mainly
because drop-down menus are simply what people are used to.
> A completely different approach, even if it turns out in the end to
> be worse, is not a bad thing in itself.
