Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!nick
From: nick@hp-sdd.hp.com (Nick Flor)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Human Factors: Paper-Like Interface
Message-ID: <1759@hp-sdd.HP.COM>
Date: 12 Dec 88 20:35:13 GMT
References: <2690003@hpdsla.HP.COM> <88Dec10.134912est.10521@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu>
Sender: netnews@hp-sdd.HP.COM
Reply-To: nick@hp-sdd.hp.com.UUCP (Nick Flor)
Organization: Hewlett Packard, San Diego
Lines: 38

In article <88Dec10.134912est.10521@ephemeral.ai.toronto.edu> bradb@ai.toronto.edu (Brad Brown) writes:
>
>Q:  How many people would really want an interface like this?  I would
>love to draw on paper for things like drawings and equations, and it
>would probably be very nice for menu selections if the menus would 
>change as you touched them.  I don't really think, however, that a 
>stylus would be better for text input -- in my case, I type *much*
>faster than I write and my writing is not very good.  My typing is
>so much better than my writing that I prefer to compose text directly
>into a word processor, where one of the advantages is that I can look
>at my notes or a paper while I type, letting the word processor deal
>with word wrap and stuff...
>
>					(-:  Brad Brown  :-)
>					bradb@ai.toronto.edu



Well maybe not for text input, but you have to remember  that  typing is
so much slower than  thinking.  If the machine that  supports the stylus
input is very good at  recognizing  patterns,  then you could input your
thoughts  in  short  hand,  or some  concept  driven  alphabet,  or more
generally, whatever minimizes the action  specification for representing
a thought on the stylus  device.  (Read ch.3 (Cog.  Eng.)  by D.  Norman
in the UCSD book, for an excellent (and I'm not saying this just because
he reads this group) model on the the 7 stages of user activity)


Of course we can read faster than we can talk, so, at least in the case of
short hand, we don't have to display our data in the format we input it.


Nick
-- 
+ Disclaimer: The above opinions are my own, not necessarily my employer's.   +
+ Oh, sure. Sure. I'm going. But I got  | Nick V. Flor           * * o * *    +
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