Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!rice!uupsi!sunic!tut!uta!ohdake!mpe From: mpe@ohdake.uta.fi (Matti Pettersson) Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng Subject: Re: Tools vs Appliances (Re: Noun-Verb vs Verb-Noun) Message-ID: <1473@kielo.uta.fi> Date: 23 Jul 90 07:16:46 GMT References: <1990Jul16.214644.3009@ee.rochester.edu> Sender: news@uta.fi Reply-To: mpe@ohdake.uta.fi (Matti Pettersson) Organization: University of Tampere, Finland Lines: 24 In article flee@guardian.cs.psu.edu (Felix Lee) writes: >I think the noun-verb/verb-noun distinction that David Seah tries to >describe isn't syntactic, but more like the difference between a drill >press and a hand drill. You take your object to a drill press, but >you apply the hand drill to your object. It's the difference between >a tool and an appliance, between a knife and a food processor. Two points: (1) There are two ways of seeing (analogies) the human-computer interface. One way is to see it as a language medium and the other as a world to act (see f.g. Hutchins et.al., Direct Manipulation Interfaces, in Norman and Draper (eds.) User Centered System Design). (2) When editing a text for example, you are scanning through the text on the screen. Now when you come across a typing error, it is quite natural to select the object first and then look after a suitable tool instead of searching for a tool, returning to the text and locating the typing error once again. --- Matti Pettersson, mpe@cs.uta.fi