Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!think!ames!amdahl!amdcad!tim From: tim@amdcad.AMD.COM (Tim Olson) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Request for human interface design anecdotes Message-ID: <19391@amdcad.AMD.COM> Date: Tue, 1-Dec-87 12:37:01 EST Article-I.D.: amdcad.19391 Posted: Tue Dec 1 12:37:01 1987 Date-Received: Fri, 4-Dec-87 07:08:44 EST References: <10579@brl-adm.ARPA> <421@minya.UUCP> Reply-To: tim@amdcad.UUCP (Tim Olson) Organization: Advanced Micro Devices Lines: 27 Summary: User Interface Design @ Xerox (Alan Kay) In article <421@minya.UUCP> jc@minya.UUCP (John Chambers) writes: | Yeah, and have you noticed that most of the postings have casually ignored | the original question, and just gone on to a trivial discussion of novices | who can't handle rm? This is a unix.wizards discussion? I'm disappointed | with y'all! Here I was expecting some really juicy examples of bad system | design. All that's appeared is a hacker's version of Trivial Pursuit. Back to the original discussion, here is an example Alan Kay gave in a talk at Stanford about 2 years ago (paraphrased by me and my potentially faulty memory!): To test out new user interfaces, Xerox would videotape novice users working with the system. In one particular instance, one person was to perform a task that required a DoIt command at the end (from a pull-down menu). He kept repeating the cycle of performing everything up to the DoIt, pulling down the menu, going to the DoIt entry in the menu, muttering something under his breath, then quitting out of the menu. Upon review of the tape, the researchers discovered that the person was muttering "DOLT!.. I'm not a dolt". They then realized that DoIt (with an uppercase I) *did* look like the word "dolt" in the sans-serif font they had for the system. They later changed it to "doit" (lowercase 'i'). -- Tim Olson Advanced Micro Devices (tim@amdcad.amd.com)