| Interesting. I'm a bit of a hybrid, CLI/GUI user. There are things that I find easier to to in a CLI (or with text in general) and things were a GUI is more natural. CLIs are finicky and force you to think in terms of text, whether it is appropriate or not. GUIs can be more expressive and haptic, but are typically very idiosyncratic and can get in the way of things. The data-driven approach to UI seems a bit crazy? If I think about the problems of any UI, I think in terms of communication, intent, learning, psychology and aesthetics. All of those things are human to human or human to computer related issues. I think data-driven (as in statistical data derived from user behavior) approaches are or can be useful in terms of "what" to present, prioritize and so on. But much less so on "how", because I think this should be based on experiences derived from direct interaction and needs to be induced by creativity. And I mean creativity from both sides, the implementer and the user. One thing that CLIs generally do better is to provide composable tools within a adaptive and simple system (pipes, text etc.), whereas it is hard to impossible to let GUIs talk to eachother and compose them to a user tailored whole. I think we should empower "non-technical" users with the freedoms and sound principles we have come to enjoy ourselves, instead of letting statistical data dominate their experience. |