Le dimanche 17 juillet 2005 à 18:59 -0400, Alan Cox a écrit :
On Mon, Jul 18, 2005 at 12:50:41AM +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> So what ? They're still closer by an order of magnitude to classical
> text apps than to a GUI in the Gnome sense.
You need to understand why. If you look at UI research you will see that there
are two distinct kinds of interface at work here. The first is one which you
are highly familiar with (eg the checkout). Prompts, guidelines and help are
buried away in case you forget a detail so that performance is maximised. You
carry the 'conceptual map' in your head.
The other that GUI's more normally reflect is casual use devices. You don't
remember the precise operation but instead the menus and icons on screen guide
you by prompting memories or links with previous experiences or related things
that are not immediately conciously present.
A trained operator can happily look up tickets for flights by typing something
like "LHR>>>YYZ>>>S#" because they do it every day. Its a
very different
interface design goal
Thank you for the explanation. I do understand it. That's why I wrote
the difference was not between technical and non-technical tasks but
between repetitive and non-repetitive (but your message will be better
received than mine I'm sure)
And an awful lot of people that use computers for work not to
chat/play/discover casually their tool fall in the repetitive category.
They're not a technical elite minority. It's a mistake to design an
interface that purposefully ignores their needs.
--
Nicolas Mailhot