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Date:Sun, 25 Apr 2004 10:41:31 +0000 (UTC) 
Subject:Re: Visual C++ toolkit 
From:A . Sloman 
Volume-ID: 

Chris Glur wrote

> The User-Interface must be the most important factor re. productivity;
> especially for the casual user.

I would not recommend poplog for a casual user. It's a programmers'
environment.

Likewise, if someone said he wanted to learn to play the violin and
could I please make it easy for him so that he could do it in a couple
of weeks I'd say: learn to use a CD player instead.

Of course a tool that is not easy for casual users can be used to
produce things for a casual user, e.g. this trivial example:

    http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/poplog/eliza/eliza.php

> Ie. don't think about Visusal/IDE for C++;
> think about general Visusal/IDE for ALL computing jobs.

There is lots of published research on interface design but until we
have a good theory of how human minds work (including perception,
motivation, learning, ontology-formation, memory, problem-solving, etc.
etc.) I doubt that we can have anything definitive on how to build
interfaces, just as you can't produce a good plant-control system if
you don't know how the plant works.

One thing that is *very* clear is that users are different!

In particular, novices in a field or technique are different from
experts in that field.

But even among experts there are huge differences. E.g. some experts
*love* using mouse-and-menu interfaces for their work, and others
*hate* them.

I hate them. They slow me down horrendously when I am using a tool I
know well, but are useful when I am exploring something I don't know.
But even for things I know well, I need quick access to things I can't
remember or have never learnt.  Learning to use the quick access
tools (including grep!) also takes time. In poplog they could be
improved, but that requires resources.

Of course, even if I hate using something I might try to produce it
for others who feel differently.

One point about free, open, source is that people who think something
should be done can have a go at doing it.

Cheers.

Aaron