the gui truths

youtube user ross scott made a video where he laid some solid groundwork of what a gui should aim to do, versus not, and many shortcomings that are present in almost every modern gui.

i'm also going to shorten and re-summarize these to be even smaller before.

• you should never get sick of looking at the gui.
• no gui will be perfect for everyone.
• some things will be good for most users.
• the gui should get out of the way when unneeded.
• the gui should be as efficient as possible when familiarized.
• the gui should appear only activate when wanted.
• it shouldn't be easy to perform accidental commands.
• keyboard-mouse switching should be minimized.
• you need multiple buttons for maximum efficiency.
• low contrast color schemes are unhelpful for vision.

let's be honest: if a gui has a color scheme that causes eye strain, or uses comic sans throughout its entire theme, most people would not bask in the pleasure of having to use such an interface. ross elaborates on this topic by suggesting that a gui's apppearence should perform exactly how a video game texture pack would perform -- changing only the appearance, but otherwise leaving the actual functionality beneath the hood untouched.

in this world, there are many people, performing many professions, with many different thought processees and past experiences. to attempt to design a gui which would perfectly fit the needs of every single person is a nigh unachievable task, as is succeeding in getting everyone to agree on a gui to use -- let alone anything.

simply put, while users are going to do a lot of different things within their operating system, there are still a lot of similar things which they are inevitably going to have to do. whether their task is as basic as file organization, to as complex as writing source code, they will also eventually perform identical tasks, such as dealing with the operating system's built in file picker dialogue box, or even simply logging in to their user account; different users will see the same gui, and this gui could work for most.

this is fairly self-explanatory. such as in a case of playing a video game, the operating system's gui should not hinder the experience.

i would argue that over 95% of windows users have had the pleasure of sharing the lovely experience that is pressing the start button on their keyboard while in the middle of a game. in a not-so-similar realm, once microsoft decided to do away with the recycle confirmation dialog box in windows 8, a lot of people likely thought that their files were simply immediately deleted once they had accidentally pressed that button. my father was one of these people.

not only is ross 100% correct here, but i can think of several way better precise-input methods than the mouse. there already exist eye-tracking systems for desktop computers. translating this tracking to positions on the display, perhaps with a key bind to enact a mouse click, would effectively negate the need for a mouse completely. for example, if one were to copy and paste text from programs on two different displays:

1. user moves their hand from keyboard to mouse.
   
2. cursor movement towards the desired text.
   
3. mouse clicks to highlight.
   
4. mouse clicks to copy.
   
5. cursor movement back towards the destination.
   
6. mouse clicks to paste.
   
7. user moves their hand back from mouse to keyboard.
   

1. user looks at the desired text.
   
2. keyboard press highlights the text.
   
3. keyboard press copies the text.
   
4. user looks back towards the destination.
   
5. keyboard press pastes the text.
   

while it's possible that you're able to read this, your eyes likely didn't appreciate the 1.26 contrast ratio that this text color is.