Wired HC Article - UI

[Richard Gaskin]

Troy Rollins writes:

> On Sunday, August 18, 2002, at 11:59  PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> But the central question was:  what can Rev learn from the design of
>> iShell?
>> 
>> Since iShell is cited as an accessible UI, perhaps there may be value in
>> exploring ways of employing Rev's vast capabilities to build a UI that
>> starts the user with something inspired by the relevant portion of
>> iShell's design, progessively disclosing additional fetures as needed.
> 
> I'll respectfully (re)submit that I don't see that happening. A month?
> That would be cheap indeed. But I doubt that would deliver even close to
> the value level desired. Nor would a year. Unless you have used the
> iShell environment, and have experienced the fact the the UI is so
> incredibly consistent and fully implemented to the last detail, as well
> as entirely rock-solid, then you can't imagine the level of work that it
> would require. 

I think I'm not writing very clearly today. :)  I wasn't advocating
replicating iShell feature-for-feature.  If you need iShell it's so much
cheaper to just get buy it than rebuild it from scratch.

The question was:  what can Rev learn from the design of iShell?

Some here have expressed that Rev is too deep too fast and that makes it
hard to learn to swim gracefully in it.  I believe all software can be
radically improved, so maybe we can discover specific solutions.

One approach would be to think about what makes iShell valuable to you, then
think of what you want to do in Rev and how that work might benefit from you
learn from iShell.

If Rev offers too much for the user all at once, maybe there's a way to
solve it for those users by thinking about progressive disclosure, a way to
reveal features in stages by paying closer attention to specific tasks and
contexts.

-- 
 Richard Gaskin 
 Fourth World Media Corporation
 Custom Software and Web Development for All Major Platforms
 Developer of WebMerge 2.0: Publish any Database on Any Site
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