Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 12:03:11 -0400 From: dochawk@psu.edu To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> Cc: "David Leimbach" <dleimbac@earthlink.net>, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Intuitive interface - was RE: vi Message-ID: <200106121603.f5CG3Bb49089@fac13.ds.psu.edu> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 10 Jun 2001 23:37:52 PDT." <000c01c0f241$0a458c60$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com>
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ted tumbled, > >From: David Leimbach [mailto:dleimbac@earthlink.net] > My problem with this is that 99% of the folks out there yapping about making > computers more "intuitive" what they really want is to make the computer > look > more like some previous computer they already learned on. They use the > phrase > "intuitive interface" as a marketing term to push software interfaces that > look > like the same tired Windows interfaces that we have seen for the last decade > or more. I don't think so. "Intuitive" suggest that it reacts in some kind of "natural" way that relates to how people already react with the world, and also to extensions withing the program. The original mac interface was intuitive. It was "close enough" to the way a desk worked that once you understood a couple of simple metaphors (clicking down holds something, double-clicking opens/does something), you understood what would happen when you did something. This has broken down over the years as things became more complicated. However, you would sometimes do the right thing instinctively, particularly in early versions of Word. I'd actually put Word Star forth as instinctive. I regularly found myself using commands I'd never heard of weithout loking them up. Once you had the basic paradigm of the diamond and extension, the layout of the entire program was logical. > I put my 3 year old son in front of a PC running Windows. He happily > started > pushing buttons at random. I then put him in front of a Macintosh. He > pushed the > same buttons randomly. So much for intuition. ??? You put him in front of a flawed copy of the mac interface, and then in front of a flawed evolution of the same interface. hawk -- Prof. Richard E. Hawkins, Esq. /"\ ASCII ribbon campaign dochawk@psu.edu Smeal 178 (814) 375-4700 \ / against HTML mail These opinions will not be those of X and postings Penn State until it pays my retainer. / \ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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