Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!jbr0
From: jbr0@cbnews.att.com (joseph.a.brownlee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: System 7 talk: Hierarchial Apple Menus
Message-ID: <1990Jun15.141744.17422@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 15 Jun 90 14:17:44 GMT
References: <13407@wpi.wpi.edu> <41889@apple.Apple.COM> <69651@cc.utah.edu>
Sender: jbr@cblph.att.com
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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In article <41889@apple.Apple.COM>, lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) writes:
> In article <13407@wpi.wpi.edu> macman@wpi.wpi.edu (Chris Silverberg) writes:
>> has been a VERY positive response to this just based on what I've 
> read....
> 
> No one ever said that user interface design should be done by popularity 
> polls.  There was lots of support for a hierarchical Apple menu on 
> AppleLink as well, although I heard it was booed at the Developers 
> Conference.

I'm not sure I agree with the "popularity poll" comment in this context (and
after all, wouldn't you put "booing developers" in that class, too?).  In
general, you are right -- you do some research and testing, you work with your
potential user base, or perhaps you rely on past experience with similar
interfaces.  In these cases, you are often making a choice between two or more
different interfaces which are often mutually exclusive.

However, in this case, the choice involved is adding additional functionality 
to an existing feature set, which is not incompatible, and is completely user-
selected.  The user must configure the Apple Menu with sub-folders, just as
the user must add choices to the existing (well, in the 7.0 context we are
discussing) flat Apple menu.  The user that does not want hierarchical menus
does not have to have them, and the novice user need not know anything about
this feature.

My point is that in my experience (I have been desigining user interfaces and
working closely with users for about 10 years) you are just about always
better off when you offer the user the *choice* of how to configure something,
especially if the choice can be easily and cleanly made.  Further, you are
usually best off when the "power user's" choice is one that by default is
completely transparent, but can be easily activated.  That's the situation I
see here -- the novice won't necessarily even know or care that the
hierarchical menu facility exists, while a power user can set it up by just
creating a folder or two and moving some files around.  This seems to be the
very essence of simplicity to me, allowing the *user* to decide how the system
will work best for them.

I do agree with the comment from one of the Apple folks that it is awfully
late to add something like this to 7.0, but I think that this is very worthy
of consideration for 7.1 (or whatever release comes next).  But before 
disregarding this idea because of a lack of emprical data on its merits,
realize that the *many* positive responses here should be considered part
of the data.  Perhaps the people in this forum don't represent the "average"
Apple user, but they do represent the core of the user community, and their
opinions should be important in determining Apple's product directions.
Perhaps he customer isn't _always_ right, but they do, after all, pay the
bills...

-- 
   -      _   Joe Brownlee, Analysts International Corp. @ AT&T Network Systems
  /_\  @ / `  471 E Broad St, Suite 1610, Columbus, Ohio 43215   (614) 860-7461
 /   \ | \_,  E-mail: jbr@cblph.att.com     Who pays attention to what _I_ say?
 "Scotty, we need warp drive in 3 minutes or we're all dead!" --- James T. Kirk