Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!mit-eddie!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!ames!pasteur!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!nprdc!trejo
From: trejo@nprdc.arpa (Leonard J. Trejo)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: subliminal feedback
Keywords: feedback windowing interfaces
Message-ID: <1061@arctic.nprdc.arpa>
Date: 17 Nov 88 14:49:50 GMT
References: <318@aratar.UUCP>
Sender: news@nprdc.arpa
Reply-To: trejo@nprdc.arpa (Leonard J. Trejo)
Organization: Navy Personnel R & D Center
Lines: 40

In article <318@aratar.UUCP> chac@aratar.UUCP (Chuck Clanton) writes:
>here is what i conclude.  in general, when designing an object to display 
>data, i expect that the user wants the information and will acquire it
>intentionally.  it should be displayed so that it is easy to obtain when
>the user makes the effort to acquire it.  however, when designing an object
>for the user to work with, its feedback properties should by and large
>be very quiet.  that is, i would like the user to always know what he or
>she needs to know while using this object, without ever making any effort
>to acquire that information.  the needed information should be provided as
>feedback that requires no added effort to obtain, no intent.  

Excuse the sarcasm, but...
one excellent tool for displaying data is typed English text.  By your
own criteria, ease of acquisition, etc., writers ought to take
advantage of well-overlearned features of typed text, such as
capitalization of proper pronouns and the first word in a sentence.
Seriously, I always find that it requires more effort to read text
without capitalization than with it.  This issue needn't bear directly
on the questions you raise about feedback, although one might argue
that capitalization provides a kind of positional feedback cue for the
eye movement system during reading.

Extending this concept to windows on computers, the symbols (cursors, borders,
backgrounds, even colors?) which serve as a form of pictorial punctuation
for the user, ought to be standardized soon so that the same kind of
automaticity that develops in reading behavior will develop for window
interactions.  Perhaps the merits of automaticity in "window-reading"
by early adoption of standards would outweigh the advantages of
contiued refinements of window features.

				L. J. T.


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