Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tci!kempf
From: kempf@tci.UUCP (Cory Kempf)
Newsgroups: gnu.gcc
Subject: GUI Designs (longish)
Summary: look and feel suit
Keywords: look feel suit apple user interface
Message-ID: <274@tci.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 89 16:59:05 GMT
References: <8906080252.AA02091@wheat-chex.ai.mit.edu> <2376@internal.Apple.COM> <6939@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <32466@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: kempf@tci.uu.net (Cory Kempf)
Distribution: gnu
Organization: Technology Concepts, Inc. Sudbury Mass.
Lines: 50

In article <32466@apple.Apple.COM> malcolm@Apple.COM (Malcolm Slaney) writes:
>There are really three issues here.  The first is whether serious intellectual
>effort goes into designing a user interface.  

I know that I am going to regret this...

I am a software engineer.  My area of specialty, to the extent that I have
one, is in graphical user interface.  Specifically, I design interfaces
for applications.  I spend a lot of time on the more complex interfaces.  
Much of this time is spent in trying to figure out how to present the
information to a user and get information back from the user in a manner
that is as painless as possible.  (painless means not spending hours reading
the manual as well as not being slowed by a 'user-stupid' interface (user-
stupid means that it assumes that the user is an idiot that can't learn))

My goal in making a user interface is to make it easy for a novice user to 
use the product, as well as make it a non-frustrating experience for an 
expert.  Additionally, I strive to make manuals obsolete... I feel that the
computer should do the work.

Once I have designed the user interface, it is there for anyone to see.
To duplicate it would not require the time and creativity that I put 
into it.  

If someone should come along later and make a new implimentation of 
my user interface on a competing product, that person could sell his
product for a lot less that I could.  This could cause my company to
go out of business.  If this process were caried out, the net result 
would be that I couldn't make a living designing better user-interfaces
because no company would hire me.  They wouldn't hire me because they
couldn't make money from my work.  The result is that we will have
computers that are more and more powerfull, and we will be spending more
and more time reading manuals and less and less time doing productive work.

For the vast majority of apple's GUI, I can/have come up with alternative
methods/metaphors.  It does take some thought, but it can be done.  (cf NeXT).

Personally, I have mixed feelings about Apple's suit against Microsoft... 
I have used MS Presentation Manager... There is a lot of similarity between
the two.  Enough that I can see how Apple could consider PM to be an 
infringement. On the otherhand, I think that there should be a limit of
on the order of 5 years for GUI's.

+C

-- 
Cory Kempf		Technology Concepts
40 Tall Pine Dr.	uucp:	{anywhere}!uunet!tci!kempf, kempf@tci.uu.net
Sudbury MA 01776	phone:	(508) 443-7311 x341
DISCLAIMER: TCI is not responsible for my opinions, nor I for theirs