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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!utcsstat!laura
From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: studying novices is NOT silly
Message-ID: <943@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 24-Aug-83 05:19:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.943
Posted: Wed Aug 24 05:19:15 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Aug-83 11:10:13 EDT
References: <2056@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 39

I did not say that studying novices was silly. i did say that I believed
designing systems for them was. If they are going to outgrow the system
then perhaps you have given them the wrong system. I get the impression
from talking to micro-computer vendors that some salesmen are working on
the 'make it slick, gimicky and moronic' school of product design. If
they user is not intimidated then he will buy it.

This is good from a sales point of view, but not so good from an ethical 
point of view. 

Some people seem to believe that a system which has 'removable training
wheels' is the best. I am not sure whether this is always possible to design. 
In some software I have seen the hooks for the training wheels destroy the once
elegant software underneath. I have written such code myself.

This may only be a reflection of my own inadequacies, I must hasten
to admit, but a menu system that I converted to a keyword with option
system (after people became disenchanted with the slow menu)
still had a strict tree heirarchal structure assumed as part of the
code. While users could now avoid the slow redraw of the screen, they
still had the 'when from node to node I'd want to leap across the
tree I'm forced to creep' problem. I could not force the programs to
all fit under a command syntax at this point in time either. Had I
not put the menu in (at someone else' insistance), the program which
is now being used would not have had my concept of 'this has to fit
onto this part of the tree because this is where the user will
logically want it' as an integral part of the program, and would have
been a better program from my point of view.

I have a 'gut feeling' that casual users do not fit into the continuum
between naive users and experts. 'Gut feelings' are nice, but not very
rigorously scientific. Since I have only been partially able to make
a list of what differentiates a casual user from one of the other 2
categories, it is a little hard to formulate an experiment (which no one
is likely to let me run anyway). I was wondering if someone out there
had already done this.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura