This Software Goes to 11

We were traveling recently and stopped at some fast-food type restaurant. I don’t remember the name. What I do remember is that they had two sizes of beverage: Medium and Large.

I was hunting around the other day to find newer versions of my installed software, specifically a newer version of the ScanSnap software that powers my lovely ScanSnap.

I also hoped that an earlier flaw in the software had been corrected, but it wasn’t, as shown here in a screenshot from the “Settings” window:

Now, call me cranky, but I have problems with these categories:

1. Normal (Fastest)
2. Better (Faster)
3. Best (Slow)
4. Excellent (Slower)

What problems? Ok, well, for starters, can someone explain to me how there is a setting which is better than “Best”? Doesn’t the definition of the word “Best” pretty much mean “There is nothing better?” I’m sure I’ve read that somewhere before, oh yeah, the definition of the word best:

1. excelling all others
2. most productive of good : offering or producing the greatest advantage, utility, or satisfaction

“Normal” (which is problematic itself) is the lowest setting. From there they could have gone to “Good” then “Better” and then “Best”. That at least would have made enough sense, assuming you were reading from the top-down (and, given that we’re talking about US-English we should be expected to read top-down). But they went “Best” and then “Excellent” which is just wrong.

Admittedly this is tricky. In US-English, we don’t have a good system for comparing 4 of something without slipping into words with negative connotations. Our natural groupings come in threes: Good, Better, Best. Fast, Faster, Fastest. Small, Medium, Large. Trying to create a comparison of 4 things usually leads to categories such as: Poor, Fair, Good, Excellent. However, the word “Poor” is not likely to be a word a software company uses to describe a setting in its program.

There was something else that bothered me that took me longer to figure out. That’s the right side column, the words in the ( ). Assuming (again) that we’re reading top-down, what’s wrong with this progression: Fastest → Faster → Slow → Slower ?

Right, it’s the progression again. If #1 is the Fastest, how can #2 be Faster? It can’t. And it isn’t meant to be. #2 “Faster” is meant to be compared to #3 “Slow” leading to the conclusion that we are to read from the bottom up. Sort of. You can’t start from #4 and read “Slower” as the first in the series, it doesn’t make any sense, because #4 is Slower than #3 but you haven’t read #3 yet if we are starting from the bottom.

The choices are asymmetrical. The use of -er endings for “Slower” and “Faster” want to be parallels, but they are not paired together. “Fastest” is paired with “Slower” while “Faster” is paired with “Slow”

How much better would it have been if the choices were:

1. Fastest
2. Fast
3. Slow
4. Slowest

? The symmetry is nearly poetic. Not only do we get matching -est on the ends, which is nice enough, but we get 7 letters for each word on the outside and 4 on the inside. As if that wasn’t enough, we get 4 words which can very nearly stand alone. Clearly “Fastest” and “Slowest” imply a comparison and therefore require some context, but you could put those words in any order and still know how they compare to one another:

1. Slow
2. Fastest
3. Slowest
4. Fast

Compare this to the scrambled version of the original adjectives:

1. Slow
2. Fastest
3. Faster
4. Slower

I’m not in favor of people who diagnose problems without coming up with suggestions for improvements. These might not be the best suggestions, but they are better ones:

1. Normal (Fastest)
2. Good (Fast)
3. Better (Slow)
4. Excellent (Slowest)

There are clear (or at least clearer) terms for both the scan quality and scan speed.

Just One More Thing….

While I’m being picky… The new version has added clarification words to this setting as well:

First of all, it looks pretty sloppy that’s there’s no space after the word “Scan” and before the opening parenthesis.

IIRC, the previous version simply said “Duplex Scan” or “Simplex Scan” I say this both out of my memory (that is, I don’t remember seeing it there before) and my belief that if it was in a previous version, someone else would have pointed out the spacing error and it would have been fixed.

I understand the reasoning for adding the words in parentheses, to clarify for people who contacted support and said “I thought this thing could scan both sides at once but I don’t see a setting for double sided scanning anywhere!!?!!”

So the technical words (Duplex/Simplex) are then paired with explanatory words.

Good choice?

Well, better than nothing, and it will probably prevent a few calls/emails to support. But I find it… ugly. Why not simplify it further?

• Scan One Side
• Scan Both Sides

Or if you really want to keep the technical words there, perhaps hoping to educate by improving the user’s vocabulary:

• Scan One Side (Simplex)
• Scan Both Sides (Duplex)

Furthermore, do we need the word “Side” there at all? Look again:

It clearly says “Scanning side:” right above the dropdown list. Are the best options really: “Scanning side: Duplex Scan (Double-sided)” or “Scanning side: Simplex Scan (Single-sided)”?

• Scanning side: Front
• Scanning side: Both

There may be better options, but they would most certainly all be less wordy than the current incarnation.

Given that the software is also designed to skip blank pages, this setting is almost superfluous, unless you are scanning lined pages (i.e. from a legal pad) which only have writing on one side and you think that the scanner might pick up the lines on the blank side.

One More Thing… (really I mean it this time)

Mac users will recognize the problem with this:

I would hazard to say that 99.99999% of all the Mac OS X software has used the exact same menu item and the exact same keyboard shortcut for an app’s preferences, which is Cmd + ,

There are some apps which do not have preferences at all (although this is nearly always a mistake), but if they do, the word used in the menu is “Preferences…” and the keyboard shortcut is the same.

Why on earth would any programmer with even a passing familiarity with Mac OS X break from this convention? And if said programmer felt some unquenchable desire to change it, why again would it be changed to Cmd + S which is (and I’m betting even the Windows users out there can guess this one) used for Save?