Why interface so unfriendly

Started by W1zzard

xiando Lv 1

Yes. I recognized that issue when I first used a band on a non tutorial protein back in May of 2008 and subsequently posed at least two suggestions to the developers about the problem and solution, as well as a few direct emails and countless attempts in_chat.

I still use bands on ocassion - for the obvious sheet hold operations, etc.), but in general not in the way I'd like to have been able to, primarily because of this lacking. It makes little economic (in all senses of the word economic) sense to spend hours being frustrated by a snap-to function that serves to do little more than act as a psychological (and physical) barrier to producing a result, especially when the game was promoted heavily as a direct human-computer interactive, rather than a continuance/variant of Folding@Home. I'd rather just tweak side chains, bash the protein a bit, and get back to more productive uses of my time than to sheep into a folding at home position due to (imo) purposefully, poorly engineered HMI and the "group" model.

What's more, the solution to the snap-to secondary issue with bands (I *was talking about a solution to the glaring issue in the rotate and optimize, ie, straighten functions) is quite trivial to implement, since the program is obviously using a variant on the Gravity_Well based "snap-to" function for ensuring adhesion to residue elements. Either one of two solutions could be very easily implemented and used to reduce this tedium

1) a toggleable release. Preferred because it is more ergonomic and reduces the likelihood of prolonged exposure carpals when a large number of bands are being placed with one end in open space.

2) a ctrl-key + mouse event to individually disable snap_to. This, however, has a subtle physical annoyance that can accelerate development of carpal tunnel syndrome for repeated use which should be obvious to anyone who uses a computer ritually…

The sole, almost trivial complication would be ensuring that the initiation point would always have snap_to, so that residues would be locked into the band at the terminus of the initiation end. Again, however, I believe that to be a trivial problem for degreed-program, university level or better programmers, and one that should be apriori tantamount for those involved in the informatics department that is tied directly into this venture. In other words, for anyone and everyone involved directly in the creation and maintenance of this research program or the game itself.

Ideally, both methods would be present, #1 for the convenience and safety of those volunteer participants who care about their long-term physical (dexteral to be specific) health, and #2 for "one-offs" and people who don't care about their health or time, and imo should have been for the duration. It has been in CAD programs for two decades.

On a side note: As one who does periodically suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of over twenty years of CAD and general computer use as both an amateur (gamer, internet, computer art, computer music composition, etc.), and professionally as programmer, engineer, and now web dev, I can attest that the ever present pain in your wrists, hands, and arms is nothing to scoff at, and once you are "part of the crowd", it's pretty much too late to go back and will only get worse as you step over the line from youth tho true adulthood and then to "aging"…so anyone reading this, you've been warned.

fwiw, in case the thought occurs. I have already posted suggestions on more than one occasion and am highly unlikely to do so again. This is just history, discussion, and a few minutes of time-to-kill while I drink my morning coffee and wait for my support-level time period to roll around so I can address a problem with the hosting company that we use.

Ah…speaking of which, it's 8:58am. time to freshen the coffee, power up Skype and IRC, and dial the telephone.