The Vuuch Voice

As applications become complex the UI becomes overwhelming. Look at the top CAD applications the number of commands multiple like rabits. To make it look like there isn’t command overload picks are pushed down the menu stack. Closer to a daily example look at Internet Explorer, how many menus do you use? One, two and if your a power user three??? Same is true for Word and Excel. So why do so many applications have se many picks available and always in your face. Oleg has recently written about UI design and about PLM UI overload. It would be very interesting to see metrics on what menus are used and when and by who. In CAD it has been easy to strip menus and push them down the tree, or stage…  But CAD has something going for it that I think is not as clear with PLM.  With CAD it is clear what the user is doing and why they are at a certain menu.  But is this true with PLM?  Through the design process the reason a user is working with a certain PLM menu is very different.  For example if we have just started a year long project and it is week 3 and I am working with a PLM Part then what I am doing is very different then what I would be doing at week 50.  As well with CAD there is really only one kind of user, the CAD designer.  I wanted to say CAD guy but with the stripper metaphor it just seemed wrong and while cow girl has a certian twang CAD girl just doesn’t cut it… 

So is there menu bloat in PLM or is it just fact that to cover the multitude of users that use it over such a long amount of development time you need lots of picks?  Does PLM really need a menu strip down?  Is there any information available that shows the menus that are really used, by which user and at which point in the process?

Does PLM need to strip down?  If PLM had less features would it be used even more?