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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Reply to "Are we designing for the users...?"
Message-ID: <968@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 28-Aug-83 13:52:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.968
Posted: Sun Aug 28 13:52:46 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 28-Aug-83 21:42:00 EDT
References: utcsstat.938, <1932@tekecs.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 35

Perhaps the question of designing for the users reflects a
different attitude about learning. I think that a lot of
learning is fun. A lot is not. It is incredibly hard work,
and akin to going to the dentist. The rewards of (learning
Lisp without a manual, going to the dentist...) are, however
worth it.

Many people want to design for the person who will not learn
unless they are being 'spoon fed'. I guess that they have a different
attitude towards learning than I do. I do not want to force anyone
to learn anything. If they want to learn something, I think that
they will be willing to put up with the trouble of learning. 
I learned about computers with CARDS -- talk about barbaric --
but it was the only thing available at the time.
In addition, I do not think that knowledge is a grab-bag of
freebies sitting in my office that I am obliged to hand out
to every passer-by. If you want to be educated, then you are going
to have to work for it. I do not give it away for free.

If you can design a system that is both easy to learn, and good
for the experts, terrific. if not, I would rather design for the
experts. In the short term, the novices will have a tough time,
but in the long term (ie for the rest of their lives after they
stop being novices) they will have a better tool.

I know that this sounds cruel and heartless to the poor people
struggling to learn, but then I never subscribed to the "learning
is easy" school of education. When the novices finally get there,
they may be grateful that we haven't decided that for the rest of
their lives they will have to grit their teeth and put up with
a "designed-for-novices" user interface out of consideration for
the novices.

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura