The lonliness of the GUI designer

[Bill Crosbie]

At 07:56 PM 12/1/95 -0800, Karen G. Schneider wrote:

>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

Karen,   I couldn't agree with you more.  But there is a lot that we, as
programmers can do for you, too.  Someone mentioned Tog's rapid prototyping.
There are a number of excellent tools out there designed to get a "quick and
dirty" user interface on screen just so that there can be  a critique of how
the program looks and feels.  There is no meat on the bones.  There should
be a cyclical process built in where computer programmers, graphic
designers, and librarians are joined at the hip, so to speak, to develop an
interface that is usable.  Once there has been a signing off on that
process, the interface should be locked for that build of the project.
(remember, I am talking about many iterations, so any glaring error should
have been caught.)  

While the interface is being decided, every party will have suggestions as
to how to implement it.  For some it will be how the end user sees the
product, for others, it will be ease of inforamation access, and for others
it will be, does this screen give me the right data to perform a quesry?
And the beautiful thing is that these lines will blur and overlap as we come
to understand each other more.  Threatening?  Maybe to some.  Personally, I
can't wait to see what such collaboration can come up with.  

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 "For my purpose holds to sail		Bill Crosbie
   beyond the sunset, and the baths	Microcomputer/Network Analyst
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   until I die."    ~ Tennyson		crosbie at aesop.rutgers.edu
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