[1008] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: Casual Instructions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (kendall)
Tue Aug 18 09:14:37 1992
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 08:09:53 CDT
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
From: kendall <KSIMMONS%UKANVM.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L%UHUPVM1.BITNET@ricevm1.rice.edu>
In-Reply-To: Message of Fri, 14 Aug 1992 09:07:08 CDT from <LIBPACS@UHUPVM1>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I must agree completely with Janet Swan Hill's remarks about casual instruct-
ions. There are so many assumptions made (consciously or not) by any user of
a system that no one can anticipate them all. Look at keyboards, even. We
have 4 different kinds of keyboards in my department (and I have yet another
at home). There is one key that functions the same on 3 but not on the fourth,
and the 4th keyboard is the type used for the public catalog. Mine at home
functions like the 3. So, people trying to use the public catalog are dealing
with atypical (for us) keyboards. It's not the those keyboards are bad. It's
just that they don't work like the other keyboards, so our assumptions about
keyboards kick in and we keep hitting what turns out to be the "wrong" key.
Who knows how many of the public do the same thing? I have one program at home
that, if I use the TAB key, it works like a SEND key. Guess how many abbrevi-
ated messages I have sent!!
The circulation supervisors of all our libraries are working on a union manual
so as to standardize procedures as much as they can be. I found that I had to
keep reminding people to "assume that we're all in a van, it goes over a cliff,
we're all dead, so this manual has got to be written as if there were no one on
the face of the earth who knew anything about the system." They quickly change
d that to "we won the lottery and are on a remote tropical island with a lot of
very handsome young natives" but you get the point (isn't it "intuitively
obvious"?)...nothing can be assumed about what people assume, except that they
will all assume something different!!
Kendall Simmons
University of Kansas
