taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (12/02/86)
This article is from Gilbert Cockton <seismo!mcvax!aimmi.hw.ac.uk!gilbert> and was received on Mon Dec 1 12:48:43 1986 Dave Taylor writes, in a postscript; >>[this leads nicely to the fact that not all interfaces are alike and that >> there is no such thing as the "right" interface or a "perfect" interface, >> because we're all so different! -- Dave] I have the feeling that there is a suggestion here that adequate interfaces cannot be designed. If this is the case, then I must disagree. If you strip a statement of enough context to make it meaningless, it is trivially true, as there is no way of falsifying it and everyway of backing it up by bringing in arbitrary context at will. Thus >> there is no such thing as the "right" interface or a "perfect" interface, is a fairly empty and trite statement. If you add enough context such as user population, application tasks, available hardware, OS limitations, then you can narrow the `right' interface down to a few alternatives (and miss some of course). The word right is meaningless, of course, without reference to the intended evaluation criteria. This leads nicely to the fact that under some very limited evaluation criteria, an interface can be perfect! The problem with BBS is that the context (users/tasks/equipment) of their use can never be sufficient to allow a detailed analysis of the interface requirements. A decision has to be taken about the type(s) of user who will use the system. From this/these stereotype(s), an appropriate conceptual model and interface style can be derived, using imagination to fill in the gaps left by incomplete design knowledge. Perhaps some of the discussion sought on personal likes/dislikes will help to fill in these gaps: > Maybe we could shoot off onto a tanget that discusses what people >desire in an interface, and also discuss what interfaces we like, and >which ones 'turn us off' :-) > The problem here is coming up with the user stereotypes for BBS systems. Then either several BBSs could cater for different styles, or each BBS could have several alternative interfaces/conceptual models. Of coursem the hard evaluation required to test the acceptability of these stereoypes cannot be carried out over a network.