quasar@bellcore.com (Laurence R. Brothers) (04/03/91)
The only problem is that there are no normative rules for designing
good user interfaces. "Professional user-interface designers"
cannot prescribe a style guide which combines sufficient expressive
power with a guarantee, or even a good hope, of constraining interfaces
to be good.
Style guides in general make NO attempt to ensure goodness of interface
design, they merely enforce a certain consistency among interfaces
which conform to the style guide. Of course the features of the
style guide should not be BAD (no comment here about Motif or Open
Look or legal action will undoubtedly follow ;-), but that in and
of itself is not going to make user-interfaces good.
User-Centered and Participatory Design approaches don't say anything
like "Let the user do it all" or "Let the professional interface
designer (ie psychologist?) do it all", instead they imply a creative
tension between the users, their requirements, and the designers, and
their technology. So the application programmer will never be
(and should never be) forced out of the design process.
Of course, all of the above is IMHO and not corporate opinion.
--
Laurence R. Brothers (quasar@bellcore.com)
Bellcore -- Computer Technology Transfer -- Knowledge-Based Systems
"There is no memory with less satisfaction in it than the memory
of some temptation we resisted." -- James Branch Cabell