From: mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse)
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 9 Sep 92 04:15:22 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: McGill Research Centre for Intelligent Machines

Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 21:13:14 GMT
Message-Id: <1992Sep8.211314.23372@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors

In article <3243@isgtec.isgtec.com>, mike@isgtec.com (Mike Sellers) writes:
> mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse) writes:
>> Not just people new to the mouse.  I've used machines with mice for
>> at *least* five years.  And I *still* find having to take a hand off
>> the keybaord and reach for the mouse every fifteen seconds very (not
>> "incredibly"; it's all too credible by now) time-wasting.
> You're both just confirming what Apple apparently found: people
> *report* that they feel that using the mouse & keyboard is
> slower/more wasteful than just using the keyboard alone.

I am not arguing with their findings.  I am saying merely that it *is*
slower _for_me_.  Or are you trying to say that my time-sense is so out
of whack that I merely *think* I'm typing 10 to 20 cps?  Or perhaps
that I merely *think* that I can't make a mouse selection in .05 to .1
second?

> On the other hand, the folks at Apple apparently also found that the
> mouse and keyboard was actually *faster* than the keyboard alone,
> people's intuition notwithstanding.

With Apple's choice of subjects, choice of software, choice of UI.  If
the subjects had been shown the full spectrum of UIs available, had
experimented with various ones, had each chosen a preferred one, had
chosen software to fit that UI, had practiced for a week or so, and
they had then timed the result, I (a) am certain the results would have
been different and (b) would say the result is much more applicable to
the real world.  (And (c) that Apple wouldn't be trumpeting the
results!)

Tests like that are far too easy to rig, perhaps not even consciously,
is about what I'm saying.

> Until you've done your own empirical study your personal experience
> does not outweigh or contradict Apple's findings.

Nor do I say it does...unless you are taking the interpretation that
Apple's results mean that *everyone* is faster using both keyboard and
mouse, even when allowed to choose their software to fit their
preferred style of interaction...in which case I *strongly* disagree.

>>> It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to
>>> press.
>> If it takes as long as *one* second to decide which key to press, I
>> consider myself "idling".  I type well over 100wpm when I don't have
>> to stop and decide what I want to type next.  If I know what I want
>> to do, and what key I need to press to do it, it will eat up perhaps
>> .05 second.
> Unless you've had yourself independently timed, I doubt strongly
> whether _any_ of these numbers are correct -- I think a reaction time
> of 0.05 second may be impossible given the rate of neural impulses
> from your eye, through your brain, down your spine, and out to your
> hands.

That is not a *reaction* time, that is an *action* time.  My typing is
heavily pipelined.  There may be a half-dozen keystrokes in the pipe at
once, but still, each keystroke takes up no more than .05 or .1 second.
(100wpm is an *average* of .1 second per keystroke, if we take the
usual figure of 6 chars/word, including punctuation.)  I did posit that
I knew what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it, meaning that I
could just dump the keystroke into the pipe the same way I do letter
keystrokes.

> On the other hand, if you really do type "well over" 100wpm then you
> are at the far end of the typing-speed spectrum.

Everyone who's watched me type agrees that I am, though I've never had
my typing speed timed accurately.  (It's part of the reason I'm as
picky about keyboard design as I am.)

> Given this, your needs and abilities do not conform to the needs and
> abilities of the vast majority of computer users; you cannot judge
> them by looking at yourself.

I am not trying to.  I'm complaining about the syndrome of refusing to
admit that anyone but the typical member of the majority even exists:
the leap from "the majority of those we studied were this way" to
"everyone is this way", or perhaps less obnoxiously phrased, but with
the same effect, to "we can ignore everyone who's not this way".

					der Mouse

			    mouse@larry.mcrcim.mcgill.edu