So everyone in usability/User-interface-land knows what WIMP is & it’s PARC history. And lately, there’s been a huge fuss over Windows’ move away from teeny-tiny-impossible-to-navigate menus to more plump ‘ribbons‘. Even in coder-land, Object oriented programming was a huge revolution, and now REST (effectively an OO-web!) is following suit.

I’m not going to get too deep into the details of all that; instead let me back up to the traditional menu. Yes, yes, that thing with “File, Edit,View, Insert, Format, Help” and the like. Question for you: how many nouns and how many verbs are on that list? And then compare each of their contents:

This menu system is entirely schizo. Noun::Verb & Verb::Noun back & forth all day long. No wonder users can never find what they want to do: there’s no consistent pattern of thought.

When you’re out working the lawn, washing your car, which do you think about first: the action or the object? Tough call really. Likely it’s “I want to perform an action, I need these objects, now I act with them.” What thought pattern is presented in these Menus? For one, too many options: you likely don’t have your laptop when you’re using a push-mower. You likely don’t have the oven running when you’re washing your car.

Back to my point: while I’ve been on about this Noun::Verb thing for a few months, I just noticed it in gmail’s settings interface. It’s a “what are we talking about? ok, what are we doing?” kind of thought pattern. It’s behind all good analytic stuff. Keeping the noun-first,verb-second saved some code of mine this week from getting mangled, would have saved a mis-managed project, and honestly, the deaf community has been doing it for years. Object first, actions second.

Aside: This noun-first/object centric user interface design was revived a bit by the “right-click” menu. But even then, sometimes it’s properties, other times it’s actions to perform. It was the beginning of the end for double-representation where I can’t play with the object like I can with my hands. No, any playing is mediated not JUST by the mouse/computer, but by the Almighty Menu (*cough* KDE’s task program k-arm *cough*). Why do I have to go to the menu to add, remove or edit a task? Why can’t I just grab it & move it? or click a plus-sign when I mouse-over it? Why? Cuz it’s too hard for programmers who tell us to be happy with what we’ve got instead of making them work harder/more. Amazing. (Stay tuned for the code-release of said task-list from me!)

I don’t doubt the original PARC guys’ braininess. They set out on something good.Their ‘document editor” likely didn’t have “document properties & statistics” (nouns!) or movie clips, email accounts, database connections (more nouns!) to connect & attach and insert & sort. But over the years, as software took on feature-creep, these nouns & verbs crept into hidden nooks & crannies of the menus, overloading ‘em, instead of rethinking and applying major modifications which scare users away.

That’s why gmail’s mail interface works: you know WHERE you are, and there’s a simple set of verbs that you can do while you’re there. It’s an entirely rethought mail system that people love for it’s simple Noun::Verb order.

Final note: sometimes it’s perfectly ok to have the verbs in the menu (edit, insert, format) when the workspace (noun) is clearly defined: “this is a document, you compose elements here” or in gmail “this is your latest mail, read it, value it or get rid of it.”