Striped Background in OS X Revisited

[Joe Lewis Wilkins]

Richard,

Interesting observations, though I guess that makes me a great deal  
younger than my biological age; perhaps the reason also that my last  
wife was 25 years younger than I was. I always use the command keys,  
even to the point of creating my own (when possible) if I don't like  
the ones provided or they're not provided at all. Now if my eyes and  
body were just as young! (huge grin)

Joe Wilkins

On Jun 28, 2007, at 10:11 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Björnke von Gierke wrote:
>> Developers will tell you their believes, but users will tell you  
>> what they need.
>
> Users will tell you what they think they need, which may not be the  
> same as what they really need.  They know what they've done, but  
> may not know the range of what can be done.  Direct observation of  
> users will yell you what their limited experience with the  
> vocabulary of interaction analysis can't.
>
> The rest of what you wrote is all very relevant and rock-solid,  
> with this one consideration that may be worth adding:
>
> I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you're over 30 years  
> old. If so, we're in the same club.  Ours is the club that grew up  
> before the Internet was invented, back when owning a computer in  
> one's childhood was still considered "geeky", and perhaps for good  
> reason since you had to write many of your own programs, and those  
> programs had to fit on a disk that was literally floppy. :)
>
> Flash forward to the 21st century:
>
> Everything you wrote is true, esp. in the third world where people  
> have had no exposure to computers at all, or in the developed world  
> among people older than you and me.
>
> But among the majority of adults in the developed world*, the  
> learning patterns you describe are extremely short-lived, likely  
> less than 5% as long as they were for our generation.
>
> As just one very small but telling example, I personally know no  
> one under 30 who doesn't use command keys for Cut, Copy, and Paste,  
> but only about half of my over-30 friends do so.  Such an anecdotal  
> guestimate can't take the place of real research of course, but I  
> would venture to guess that such research would show my estimates  
> to be conservative.
>
> In most of the developed world computing has become so ubiquitous  
> that young folks pick it up as though through osmosis.  Our culture  
> is so immersed in computing that the word "computer" is fading from  
> use as quickly as "computerized" began to fade as early as the  
> 1980s.  We're moving into an era in which it's almost meaningless  
> to refer to computers by their generic name, so young folks don't  
> use that word as much as they use "MySpace", "blog", "email", and  
> other words that describe the specific uses which connect the  
> machine to their lives. When they refer to the hardware, they  
> almost never refer to it using the generic "computer", but by more  
> specific terms like "Mac", "Dell", "laptop", "Sidekick".  And their  
> use of text messaging is so pervasive that even at the college  
> level work is submitted with spelling reflective of that medium.   
> We're in a brave new world.
>
> So while I agree with everything you said, I would caution  
> designers to be very careful in cases where a design favors  
> presumed learnability over usability.
>
> Learnability is a critical component of ergonomic design of course,  
> at least on par with usability, and for marketing arguably more so  
> since without adoption there can be no productivity.
>
> But it's an area that demands user testing for a good evaluation,  
> esp. if the designer is over 30.  You and I think we're clever with  
> all of our computing experience, while young people take most of  
> what we know for granted.
>
> Dem young'uns is all gone cybernetic nowadays. :)
>
> -- 
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Media Corporation
>  ___________________________________________________________
>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com
>
>
> * I really dislike the term "developed world", and cringed as I  
> wrote it.  But "post-industrial nations not only in the West but  
> globally which have sufficient technological parity with the EU,  
> Taiwan, Japan, Australia, and similar regions" seemed a bit wordy.
>
> One of the things I hate about "developed world" is the implication  
> that anything not meeting its definition is "undeveloped",  
> conjuring a sense that the value of a people is derived primarily  
> from an assessment of how economically beneficial they are to  
> someone else.
>
> Am I being over-sensitive here, or appropriately aware?  What  
> better term might there be than "developed world"?  I must have  
> picked up the phrase in public school in the '60s, and stepped off  
> the fashion boat too many ports ago to know what the contemporary  
> phrase would be. Thanks in advance if you can help bring my writing  
> into the 21st century.
>
>
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