[299] in Athena User Interface
Re: Current thinking on gZephyr
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Wed Jul 19 22:20:27 2000
Message-ID: <otRa7aoGgE6e17cZo0@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 22:20:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: aui@MIT.EDU, "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
In-Reply-To: <200007141327.JAA04550@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
I am backlogged and this issue might now be stale, but I'll answer it anyway.
Excerpts from mail: 14-Jul-100 Re: Current thinking on gZe.. Christopher
Beland@MIT.E (2450)
> Regarding gZephyr, I agreed with everything people said, though I was a
> bit confused by Bill's comment:
> > I believe that the majority of zephyr users have no clue what
> > "class" and "instance" are all about. Perhaps a sender interface
> > that continues not to require users to understand those things would
> > be appropriate.
> Most users (unless they are in a class, living group, etc., that has a
> class/instance) are indeed unaware of zephyrs "group chat" features.
> However, I think this is mostly due to the obtuseness of the
> command-line interface.
At the Usability Team meeting, there was considerable talk about a book
called _The_Inmates_Are_Running_The_Asylum_. Apparently the point
of the book is that folks who are good at organizing tasks and coding
them (ie programmers) aren't always so good at thinking of things from a
user's perspective. The book apparently presents a way of thinking
about what the user does in terms of making needed functionality
visible, and hiding unneeded functionality. Apparently this is done by
conceiving of basic models for classes of users.
My point is that we should find a way to make users who need certain
group chat facilities be able to get them, but that we should not presume
to enlighten users about Tony DelaFerra's organizing them into Class and
Instance back in 1986.
Excerpts from mail: 14-Jul-100 Re: Current thinking on gZe.. Christopher
Beland@MIT.E (2450)
> Users do need to be able to DTRT when someone tells them "zephyr the
> 6.170 instance" or "zephyr class fenway" so we cannot hide these
categories from them entirely.
My point is, "Can we re-express the group messaging such that users can
easily understand the button they need to press for what they want to
do?"
Why ever did 6.170 get made into an instance, but fenway made into a
class anyway?
How might we provide TWO buttons: [send to individual] [send to group]?
Maybe we can't, but if not then it's because our interface is too wedded
to the Zephyr protocol, and not wedded enough to user needs.
-wdc
