[WEB4LIB] RE: of mouse balls and such

[Dan Robinson Indexing Services]

Whoa.... why include ATMs in the 'no instructions needed' 
category. Can a naive user walk up to an ATM and use it the first 
time with no chance of error? 

I would be glad to prove the point... with someone else's money. 
<grin> 


Dan Robinson
drobinson at hwwilson.com


On 3 Jan 00, at 13:19, Tara Calishain wrote:

> At 12:39 PM 1/3/2000 -0800, Moderow, Kevin wrote:
> >Long ago the command prompt was considered unforgiving.  Today the mouse is
> >unintuitive.    One must ask: Just how much dumbing down is required?  I
> >fear the day when being required to think is an assault on the individual's
> >self worth.
> 
> My goodness, I don't consider it a case of "dumbing things down." It's just
> that it's bad enough to criticize someone for not following instructions. 
> Criticizing
> them for following them perfectly strikes me as egregious.
> 
>................
> 
> A mouse interface is not intuitive! It's good, and it makes using the computer
> much easier than a plain old DOS prompt. But it's not intuitive! Fifty 
> years from now
> when practically every kid born grows up around computers and watches 
> touchscreens
> being used and mouses moving around, THEN you can skip teaching it, just 
> like you
> can skip teaching how to use a push-button phone and how to operate an ATM. But
> until it's ubiquitous, you must ascertain a user's level of knowledge and 
> accommodate
> it.
> 
>