From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich
	<YANDROS.92Sep1204936@fredric-brown.MIT.EDU>
	<NEERI.92Sep3175345@iis.ethz.ch> <185mepINNr6k@early-bird.think.com>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1992 14:02:56 GMT

[Dropped lots of newsgroups]
In article <185mepINNr6k@early-bird.think.com> barmar@think.com (Barry Margolin) writes:
>In article <NEERI.92Sep3175345@iis.ethz.ch> neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher) writes:
>>Maybe I misinterpreted your expression "key sequence to get to menubar". What I
>>thought of is you press a key, the first menu falls down, and you maneuver your
>>way to the desired menu entry using the cursor keys.
>
>Consider the Motif style of menu accelerators.  Each menu has an associated
>key (e.g. "F" for the "File" menu), and then a second key selects an option
>within that menu.  Thus, Control-F O might be the accelerator for "Open..."
>(the Control modifier is necessary to distinguish accelerators from
>ordinary text being entered in the window).  By organizing the accelerators
>both mnemonically and hierarchically similarly to the menus, the transition
>is simplified.

I have two problems with this approach:

- Doesn't it encourage unnatural menu names ?
- Does it lend itself well to translation ? I often find myself in the position
  of having to use both the German and the English version of a Program.

>>  People new to the mouse find the process of reaching for it every time they
>>  want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And
>>  therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: It is boring to find it
>>  because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive
>>  engagement.
>>
>>  It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press.
>>  Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only
>>  is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! *Real*
>>  amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist.
>
>While I agree that the time taken reaching for the mouse is lost, I
>personally find the process of selecting an item from a menu just as
>challenging as remembering the keyboard sequence.  The precise positioning
>necessary to select just the right menu item is a complex motor task.

I am no expert in this area, so I won't speculate on whether this motor task is
also a high-level cognitive function or not. On point which is maybe noteworthy
is that the study was most likely conducted with non-hierarchical pulldown
menus, which are relatively simple to hit.

>Did the study differentiate between users who touch type and those who
>don't?

I don't know more about this study than what I posted.

>For non-touch typists, I suspect that much of that cognitive
>process is simply searching for the key.

This is of course correct, and I would like to think that Apple had thought of
this factor.

>Another factor, I presume, is consistency.
>[...] I suspect many (but not most) Mac users who don't normally use
>shortcuts still use the keyboard equivalents to Cut, Copy, Paste, and Quit,
>since these are the same in just about every application defines these the
>same way.

Tognazzini also mentions another reason for using keyboard shortcuts for Cut,
Copy, and Paste: It allows two handed editing (selection with the mouse,
commands with the keyboard).

>>  Hence, users acheive a significant productivity increase with the mouse in
>>  spite of their subjective experience.
>
>This reminds me of an article I read years ago (in "Technology Review", I
>think) about subjective experiences when waiting.  One of their findings,
>and I see the same behavior in myself, is that car drivers will often take
>a longer route in order to avoid traffic lights, even though the added
>driving time is less than the usual waiting time.
>
>The issue for user interface designers is what they should be optimizing:
>absolute productivity or user satisfaction.  If a user is 10% more
>productive but enjoys the process 20% less, is that a good tradeoff?

Personally, I try to provide both keyboard shortcuts for personal satisfaction
and pulldown menus for efficiency :-)

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                   neeri@iis.ethz.ch
 "You must have picked up that copy of Scarlett instead of Inside Mac
  when you tried to find the right call..." -- Keith Rollin
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news