Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsrgv.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!ralph
From: ralph@utcsrgv.UUCP (ralph hill)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Menus bad?
Message-ID: <1969@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 16-Aug-83 00:08:12 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1969
Posted: Tue Aug 16 00:08:12 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Aug-83 01:54:08 EDT
Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto
Lines: 37


This is in response to utcsstat!laura's comments.

To begin, I agree with laura, in that we are not yet able to produce
effective models of users, and this severely limits our ability to
design interfaces in the absence of experience.

What bothers me though, is her rather broad attack on "human factors
engineers".  If her menu example is representative of her experience, 
then I suspect that she was dealing with ill-informed individuals.
Perhaps this news group can help remedy the situation.

I will do my part by trying to explain some of her menu problems.
The key here is the difference between recall memory and recognition
memory.  An experience user tends to know what they want to do, and can
"recall" the command to do it.  The inexperienced user, not having
as much experience, and hence, not having as highly developed skills
for memory searching, relies on the ability to "recognise" the correct
command in a menu (or, sigh, the index to the user's manual).
Hence the difference in preferences.

There are many other issues involved, such as social stigma (real hacks
don't use menus), personal preference and familiarity with the specific
system in use.

I have seen most of the this written up somewhere, but a search of
my bibliography on the keyword "menu" doesn't show up
any hopefuls.  Sorry.

--------------------
          ralph hill
	  Computer Systems Research Group
	  University of Toronto

ARPANet   utcsrgv!ralph@UW-BEAVER
UUCP      {cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!ralph
-or-      {cwruecmp,duke,linus,decvax,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!ralph