Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!chinet!clif
From: clif@chinet.UUCP (Clif Flynt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Request for human interface design anecdotes
Message-ID: <1989@chinet.UUCP>
Date: 15 Dec 87 15:46:03 GMT
References: <10579@brl-adm.ARPA> <421@minya.UUCP> <19391@amdcad.AMD.COM> <1943@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM>
Reply-To: clif@chinet.UUCP (Clif Flynt)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 38

In article <1943@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> matt@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM (Matt Costello) writes:
>The real problems in interface design generally occur because of
>unstated assumptions.  We had a hilarious incident occur here
>recently...
>
>  Imagine our suprise when a worried secretary called
>to say that she had been able to fit only 5 of the disks into the
>disk drive.  
>

  A similar incident happened to a friend, diagnosing a floppy disk read 
problem over the phone.  
  "Have you cleaned the disk?"  He inquired, thinking that the heads might
be dirty.
  "I'll try it and call you back", said the person at the other end, and
about 10 minutes later called back to inform my friend.  "I took the disk
out of that black wrapper, and you were right, it was covered with brown
dusty stuff.  I cleaned that all off, but it still doesn't work."


  There is also the tale of the DP manager who wanted to make sure that
nobody would overwrite the data on his tapes.  He filled the slots where
the write-enable rings would go with epoxy, so that no-one could put
a write enable ring in.  He didn't realize that ANYTHING in that slot will 
enable the tape for writing.

  Another friend of mine tells the tale of a system where people 
could log in OK as long as they sat in front of the terminal.
If they stood in front, then their password was rejected.
  It finally turned out that two key-caps on the keyboard had been swapped.
When people sat, they put their fingers on the 'home row' and typed,
but standing, they typed with two fingers, and looked at the key-caps to 
see which keys to press.
-- 
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My Opinions are my own. I can't imagine why anyone else would want them.
Clif Flynt	ihnp4!chinet!clif
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