I personally can’t stand the Dock on Apple’s Mac OS X. It doesn’t feel right to me, it doesn’t hold enough information nor does it display the information it does have correctly. And I feel like it is stealing screen space from me (and “auto-hide” is just a crappy hack that feels even worse).

But, ages ago, as a “thought experiment” I decided to design my own “computer user interface” from scratch. Something that non-computer users would understand. You see, to people like me, things like “double-clicking” and “holding the Control key while pressing S” are easy. To some people, it’s not that they’re difficult, it’s just that they’re more difficult than they need to be. Hence so many people single-click when they should be double-click and double-click when they should single-click. Hence so many people use the Caps Lock key, instead of holding down Shift, to type in Capitals.

So, what would an interface for these “non-expert” users look like? A computer is a multi-function device, so I tried to think of a physical multi-function device. The one that came to mind was a stereo. A range of different functions (”tuner, phono, cd, tape” erm I’m showing my age now). So you have a row of buttons. Click a button (once) and the stereo’s function changes.

If you were to model that then the perfect “non-computer” interface would have a row of big, clear, buttons that you click once. When you do that, the computer’s function changes.

And that’s when it hit me. That’s the Dock in OS X (or more correctly NeXTStep). Click an application’s button (once) and all that applications windows are brought to the front. It becomes the computer’s primary function. A simple model with simple interaction, perfect for the user that’s just starting out or lacking in confidence.