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From: wex@pws.bull.com (Buckaroo Banzai)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Who says what to whom (was Re: VR Protocols.)
Message-ID: <8842@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 6 Oct 90 12:06:27 GMT
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In article <8511@milton.u.washington.edu> plains!tsmith@uunet.UU.NET (Timothy Ly
le Smith) writes:
>[...] with pratice it is possible for at least 2 people to learn how to
>in a more than one-step-at-a-time world.  It is possible that we are just
>more capable than others or it may be that it is easier to exist in a one-

You misinterpret me.  What I meant, when I quoted Ms. Bricken's "one-step-at-
a-time" phrase, was that this was our learned mode of locomotion (step as in
what we do with our feet).  The remark was made in reference to Mike Moore's
thoughts about non-linear locomotion means.  I was trying to say that I
agreed with Mike about the desirability and implementability of such means,
but that users going into such an environment would be fighting decades of
learning, and millenia of evolution.

For example, consider the plight of the highly-educated, highly-intelligent
gentlemen whom I observed playing Mattel's GLOVEBALL game at the Interactive
Experience at CHI'90:  This game (the first designed explicitly for the
powerglove) is a relatively simple break-out style game in 3D.

While children had no trouble picking up the concepts of this game, older users
exhibited the following problems:
        - certain of the bricks had question marks on them.  This indicated a
special-scoring brick.  Older users repeatedly asserted that the question
mark probably indicated (paraphrase) "this is how to get help with the system."
        - at random times, various creatures would appear on the screen.  The
game allows one to shoot by making a gun shape with the hand.  The person
from Mattel running the game was repeatedly asked (again, by the older non-
video generation) "What are those creatures?"  The answer "The meanies! of
course" was deemed not acceptable by most of the questioners.
        - The game consists of about a hundred interconnected playing areas.
One moves out of an area into another by clearing all the bricks from a wall
and then flying into/through the wall.  Many users, including myself this time,
had trouble remembering this when told (no one discovered it on their own).
Once told it was a wall, that concept stuck and the icea of walking through
walls, although a popular fiction in our culture, is still highly counter-
intuitive.

I could go on, but the point, I think, is made: we carry enormous baggage
inside our heads.  We will inevitably bring this baggage into cyberspace.
If we build our VRs too unlike users' expectations, they will be unable to
use them.  Remember that we are a strange bunch of enthusiasts, willing to
try anything.  Before we get the average mechanical engineer to use one of
these thigns every day, we're going ot have to do a lot of adapting (to him).


-- 
--Alan Wexelblat                        phone: (508)294-7485
Bull Worldwide Information Systems      internet: wex@pws.bull.com
"Politics is Comedy plus Pretense."