The lonliness of the GUI designer

[Karen G. Schneider]

>A last comment about librarians.  I would expect vast amounts of solid
>research findings about how humans interact with information and information
>systems to be flowing out of our schools of library science. And of course
>not much is . . . Why is this?  Have we attracted too many humanities types
>into the programs?  People weak in mathematical skills?  It's 1995, for
>heaven's sake -- by now we should have had mountains of verifiable
>findings about how people and interfaces interact. Stuff we could use
>in designing systems. Stuff we could give to programmers and not force
>them to flail about.

Joe, thank you--you've changed the thread from the programmers vs. the
librarians to the humanities majors versus the math majors.  Certainly a
start.

As an English major (Barnard, '82) with a strong interest in "verifiable
findings about how people and interfaces interact," I agree LIS programs
have an uphill battle in changing curricula to incorporate this kind of
education.  And I would submit we need to learn more than "what to give to
programmers"--we need to know enough about programmers and programming to
interact with them more intelligently than dumping stuff in their lap and
coming back a year later to say, "hey, that's not usable!"  For a long time
librarians accepted what was being written for library automation software
because to get involved in the design was to get our hands dirty with
"techie stuff"--and not to drag in the nasty p-word (paradigm--hey, what
were YOU thinking?), we really didn't see this new stuff as our domain, and
it has taken a major p* shift for us to begin assuming accountability in
this area.  We are accountable for the outcomes of the systems we select,
and delegating the responsibility for a user-sensitive system does not
mitigate that accountability.  (I don't think you're disagreeing with me,
Joe--I'm just on a roll.)  That means, not necessarily becoming expert
programmers, but at least understanding the components of a software
program and definitely the principles of good interface design, not to
mention some smarts about info storage and retrieval in a networked
environment.

Programmers need our help.  We need them to do their programming thingy,
and they need us to do the people thingy.  And it's up to us, the access
mavens, to make sure the outcome is a product that results in optimal user
access. That starts (but hardly ends) with the idea that a good interface
isn't something you top off a program with like frosting to a cake.

On the other hand, librarians have diligently churned out quantities of
information related to cognitive research in information science.  See
Bryce Allen, Cognitive Research in Information Science: Implications for
Design, ARIST 26: 3-37 (1991) for an overview.  And we know a lot about
demographics.  So Boyd's comments about end-users taking responsibility has
selective applicability; it may well apply to academic users, but for
five-year-olds, new Americans, and many other groups, it may well be that
the interface still needs to come to the user.  I was going to write a
smiley but got slam-dunked for it on another list (as if it were some
peer-reviewed journal, not an echat forum...), so <emulate wink and grin>.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Karen G. Schneider * kschneid at umich.edu *http://www.sils.umich.edu/~kschneid
Cybrarian * PhD Student, UM SILS * Columnist, American Libraries
Forthcoming: The Internet Access Cookbook (e-mail Neal-Schuman at icm.com)
Technozealot* Iconoclast * Problem Child * Aging Disgracefully