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From: bks@alfa.berkeley.edu (Brad Sherman)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Keywords: interfaces, icons, cross-linguistic issues
Message-ID: <1989Aug14.183557.26947@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 14 Aug 89 18:35:57 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <4560@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: bks@alfa.berkeley.edu (Brad Sherman)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 31

In article <4560@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> matt@uhccux.UUCP (Matthew McGranaghan) writes:
>In article <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> "CROSS-LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF ICONS",
>dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark) points out an interesting feature of icons.
> ...
>Reactions?

	After CHI '88 I had to keep reminding myself that the 'I' stands
for Interaction, not Interface.  After CHI '89 it seemed to have been 
further refined to Icon.  I have been immersed in the same culture as
the Mac interface designers, but it was not immediately apparent to me
that a house means go back to the beginning, and I use a magnifying glass
to enlarge or expand, not search.
	At the Wang "freestyle" exhibit, I was having a lot of fun with
this new toy, but was having some problems using the "buttons" at the
top of the screen.  I thought that they were an abstraction of a cassette
player or VCR panel.  One of the developers (about 25 years old, I'm 38)
informed me that they were patterned after the controls of a CD player
which allows one to switch from track to track. "Oh," I said. "Like an
8-track cartridge player!"
	"A what?" he replied.

	An anesthesiologist at the same convention told me of a piece
of electronic hardware which had on the back panel, above a socket for 
a cable, a picture of a heart with the international slashed-circle
over it.  After querying the manufacturer he found out that this means
electrically isolated --no shock to the heart.

	Are band-saws user-friendly? Let's stop designing for tyros.

----------------
	Brad Sherman