Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!att!whuts!homxb!homxc!marty
From: marty@homxc.UUCP (M.B.BRILLIANT)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: subliminal feedback
Summary: the system should respond subliminally to the user
Keywords: feedback windowing interfaces
Message-ID: <4294@homxc.UUCP>
Date: 21 Nov 88 16:10:02 GMT
References: <318@aratar.UUCP> <651@sdics.ucsd.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel
Lines: 42

In article <651@sdics.ucsd.EDU>, norman@sdics.ucsd.EDU (Donald A Norman-UCSD Cog Sci Dept) writes:
> A comment on Chuck Clanton's comment on feedback.  The issue arose
> from a private set of communicatins he and I had over his earlier
> posting of a question about the "focus": problem -- how to specify
> which window is active so that the user would not make the (common)
> mode error of intending to operate upon the contens of one window, but
> because it had not been formally selected, having the actionstake
> effect upon another window.
> .....
> The goal is to make the properties of the system obvious enough that
> the new user can learn them (hence the need for signals that are
> consciously available), yet subtle enough that the frequent user does
> not have the normal work interfered with, so that the usage is
> automatic, and, as a result, the user is not consciously aware of them.

Two points an experienced (I won't say ``expert'') user would like to make.

In the first place:  Except for the first day, it isn't the new users
who make focus errors.  It's the expert users who have become so
familiar with the system as to do things without much thought.  The key
term in the first paragraph is ``formally selected.''  Inexperenced
users are careful to keep the formal requirements of the system in
mind; experienced users keep in mind the work they use the system for.

In the second place:  Experienced users could work faster if they did
not have to ``formally select'' the window to be worked in.  A smart
system would know which window the user is looking at, just as a person
at a meeting can tell which member or members of the group the talker
is talking to.

For now, we have to put the burden on the user to know which window the
stupid machine expects input for.  As a goal, let's put the burden on
the machine to figure out what the user wants.  Ever since computer
programming began, it has been a truism that the machine ``does what
you tell it, not what you want.''  When will we advance beyond that?

M. B. Brilliant					Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520	(201) 949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733	att!houdi!marty1

Disclaimer: Opinions stated herein are mine unless and until my employer
	    explicitly claims them; then I lose all rights to them.