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From: akm@obelix.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.misc,comp.windows.ms
Subject: Re: give me solid facts: Windows/Mac
Keywords: ease of use issues
Message-ID: <1991Mar27.033317.23763@cs.uoregon.edu>
Date: 27 Mar 91 03:33:17 GMT
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Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Oregon
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In article <444@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> brendan@cs.uq.oz.au writes:
>Perhaps the philosophy is that people should be spending time learning
>their application instead of learning the machine. This seems to work
>since Mac users find time to learn 5-6 different applications. The Mac
>machine has a small set of skills to learn and they are of utility
>in every application.

I *believe* that you are quoting from some studies that said that Mac
users typically learn 5-6 applications, but PC users learn fewer. As a
researcher in user interfaces I would like to see the research (not
that I am doubting its findings), to learn what the populations were,
and what kinds of jobs they were doing so that I can put the research
into perspective. I don't know of any research comparing Windows 3.0
and the Mac, though I have seen research from earlier versions of
Windows, which favor the Mac.

"The literature" on human computer interfaces talks about these issues
to some extent. It is easier to learn a new application if its user
interface is similar to that of another application that you have
used. Hence the Apple Style guides and the CUI for windows which
define in some detail what applications should look like for their
respective platforms. But these findings need to be taken into
context. I don't know what the 5-6 applications described were, but my
guess is they included one or two "major" applications (word
processor/spreadsheet etc), and a 4-5 utility type applications, or
applications where the user had minor knowledge of the application.
This is a *major* improvement over the DOS world, where the interfaces
were so different that users would not touch other applications (my
perception), but the battle is not over.

I feel (MHO) that an application like Word (substitute your favourite
'major' application here) is so complex to use that just a consistent
user interface will not be enough to "master" the application. So a
user proficient in, say, PaintBrush/MacPaint might be able to quickly
do a simple document in Word, but would not be able to produce a
complex document (say chapters, tables etc) without investing a fair
amount of time learning the application. My personal experience has
been that users I help with Word/Excel/Pagemaker (users who use them
every working day), still have major trouble using it. This is both on
Windows 3 and Mac. So, I personally take all the noise about ease of
use, consistency, and transfer of knowledge with a grain of salt.

>since Mac users find time to learn 5-6 different applications. The Mac
>machine has a small set of skills to learn and they are of utility
>in every application.

You could say that the "small set of skills" that the "Mac machine
has" are in essence those addressed by the programmer's style guides
by, say, the Mac and Windows. I argue that these are elementary
compared to the skills/knowledge required by 'major' applications, and
so are not enough to learn major applications.

In this particular aspect, I don't see a difference between Windows
3.0 and the Mac.

kartik

-- 
Anant Kartik Mithal                                     akm@cs.uoregon.edu
Research Assistant, 					(503)346-4408 (msgs)
Department of Computer Science,                         (503)346-3989 (direct)
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1202