Addison-Wesley sent us in the fourth edition of one of the most highly acclaimed user interface & usability books ever published: "Designing the User Interface", by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant. Read more for a quick review.
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Member since:
2006-06-02
Fans: 1
Folks,
I am a poor user with some experience of delivering information as an information profesional, with a passing interest in cognitive science, on which the lead to the following is based. In other words, please forgive the undoubted ignorance, just my own small candle lit in darkness of same...
Palo Alto has done some stuff on "cutting up" (a la William Burroughs, perhaps?) information and its presentation and re-presentation to users, called sensemaking:
http://www.parc.xerox.com/research/projects/sensemaking/default.htm...
Would it in fact make sense to incorporatre some of these ideas into the design of the way the UI interacts with the computer user? I am as much just interested to get a reaction as to make a statement here.
Cheers
Member since:2005-07-06
Fans: 0
Would it in fact make sense to incorporatre some of these ideas into the design of the way the UI interacts with the computer user?
The answer to your question, I would surmise, is: it depends.
It depends mainly on what thise 'sensemaking' actually entails. My guess is that it's not so much applicable to OS-UI design, as it is to application-UI design. There's a lot to be gained by proper information presentation compared to the 'default way'. However, proper information-presentation depends on context such as the user's goals/task, and the material. It sounds like something that would do great integrated with specialised applications, but would be hell to implement OS-wide.
What however could be implemented at the OS level would be an API to facilitate flexible presentation of information, and the integrating of search-results.
At least, that's what I would think.
There's still a lot that could be gained by implementing cognitive science results with UIs on a greater level than is currently being done of course; currently it's mainly 'seepage' from one science to another, being implemented piecemeally.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Fans: 5
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Fans: 4
Back when I was taking multimedia in university, we were assigned a book by Donald Norman called The Pscyhology of Everyday Things. It's about usability in general and I don't remember there being much about computers interfaces specifically (written back in '88), but he does go over a lot of basic stuff that's probably fundamental to understanding computer usability as well. One of the most interesting parts in the book is where the talks about doors to public buildings and the differences between ones which make it obvious whether they should be pushed/pulled and the ones that are confusing.