Ryan Fairchild

No, I am not trolling.  I seriously believe that Tab Candy solves nothing and only complicates your browsing experience even more.  Everyone knows the canonical book Don’t Make Me Think, and what it preaches as good UI design.  Tab Candy could look beautiful, function smoothly, provide extra features, but it still “makes me think”.  

I routinely try to get my parents (my test subjects) to use new tools that I find interesting, such as LaunchBar or Google Desktop Quick Search, however they never stick with it.  The tools are fine for me because I am not the average user, for the casual computer user these things are overkill.  They do not need to do lightning speed research on API docs, or move thousands of files between directories on a daily basis.  

They want an easy way to do simple things.

Let’s look at similar concepts to Tab Candy such as Expose and Spaces.  A co-worker and I were discussing how to replicate this using what we have (minus the metadata features), and it is pretty simple.  You could just open new windows based on areas of interest and open new tabs in those, then use Expose to jump between “areas”.

Simple but not for my Dad.  

It would take him time to get used to using new tools on a Mac and then discipline himself to organize his tabs.  His solution is to have all of his tabs in one window.  He is busy and has no time to care about organizing much on his computer.

Last week, I asked my mom how many tabs she has open at one time.  Her answer: “A lot”.  She wasn’t lying there were upwards of 40 opened.  She solved her own problem by opening new windows and moving tabs around.  When asked “Are you using all of those?”, she replied “Yes, I bookmark the things I do not need right now though”.

Simple enough.

Both have different approaches to solving their own problems.  My Dad sees no problem with opening 10 tabs inside one window.  The mother has her own way of organizing things.

Why fix that?

It could be said that this is a problem, but until I asked both of them they never really thought about it.  ”Why, is that wrong?” was their first question after I asked them.  Introducing something that regular users do not care enough about typically will not gain mindshare.  Power users will probably drool over it, but to reach the masses you must trick them into thinking nothing changed.

Trying to vastly redefine anything will always incur backlash I am sure.  I could be totally wrong about my entire analysis and end up using it when it comes out.  My doubt is strong though.  Typically, I focus on one thing at a time and close everything else.  

Aza obviously is a much more vetted individual than I, and maybe after trying it I will change my mind.