From: tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen)
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 6 Sep 92 17:21:57 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Convex Computer Corporation, Colorado Springs, CO

Date: Sun, 6 Sep 1992 14:59:44 GMT
Message-Id: <1992Sep6.145944.5828@news.eng.convex.com>
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors,rec.games.pinball,alt.religion.computers,comp.editors

[I really have no idea where to put followups.  Some trimming is
 probably a good idea.]

From the keyboard of mouse@thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu (der Mouse):
:>   It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to
:>   press.
:
:Oh, the subjects were just basically incompetent in general.  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.  

Indeed.

When playing pinball, there's an initial learning phase as you figure
out what does what when and why, but after that, things just start to
click in an automatic way: the whistles and bells become cues that
trigger automatic motor responses without the need for deep contemplation.
The machine disappears underneath you, and you concentrate on the real
goal, having pushed off the mechanism to a part of your brain not
involved in active cognition.

If you can remember back that far (I can -- it's been only five years
now) driving a car is much the same way.  When you first learn, there
seems like a lot to always keep in your head, but a hundred thousand
miles of driving later, it's all on automatic.

I've got vi in my wetware now.  I don't *ever* think about switching modes
or backspacing.  In fact, I often make a mistake and without looking at
the screen, automatically ^H or ^W to do the correction.  In the case of a
slow link, I can get quite a few editing commands in front of what's going
on in the screen, but that's ok.  I've got a mental model of what I'm
typing, and don't even need the characters on the screen to know that my
fingers have done the wrong thing.  It's all subsumed: what once required
thought now goes incredibly fast.  When you're in that kind of a
high-speed mode, moving to the mouse and back *does* slow you down.

Back to pinball: there's a relatively new game out there called Getaway
(derivative of an old favorite, High Speed) in which now and then you're
told to shift gears.  This requires moving your hands off the flippers to
the shift lever (which it has instead of a plunger).  Slows me down.
Maybe I could eventually get used it (and maybe I have: I'm in the 100M
point range these days) but it does distract me to move my hands from
the principle input device, even though it's easier to go back to the
flipper buttons than to my home row on the keyboard.  I've lost balls
that way, which is annoying.  Of course, my editor doesn't operate in
real-time response mode as pinball games do. :-)

Another analogous phenomenon is that of learning a new piece on the
piano.  You start reading through a new fugue, and you're just plunking
out notes.  In fact, as long as you need the music in front of you, you
really haven't internalized it.  But eventually, if you practice enough, 
everything flips into automatic.  The piece gels.  Your very fingers
seem to know the music, and your brain can start dealing with bigger
issues, like how a certain melodic line fits into the rest of the fugue,
as opposed to how this note fits between these two other notes.

Some people never get the hang of pinball.  They play it once a year
or less, and never quite get the hang of it.  Even experienced pinball
aficcionados take a few games to get up to speed, but once they do, it's
really something to watch.  Likewise with piano: even if you do play
there's a time before a new piece flows like magic from your finger tips.
But if and when it does, it's a wonder.

Likewise with computer programs: if you don't use something very often,
the going will be slow and rough.  If you need a manual for it, it's
probably too hard, because you don't want to be forever digging through
some book of seeming crytocodes to figure out what to do.  But once you
figure out how it works, you can start going on automatic, and keeping
your fingers entirely on the keyboard lets you speed up to a rate much
higher than one managing mice and function and arrow keys ever can. 

The thing I always forget is that while this is important to a few folks
like me and thee, the vast majority never want to go that fast.  They
don't use the program often enough to want the input and control functions
to be as fast as those of us who spend most of our waking our do.  They
just want it to be easy to use without knowing much about it.  They
comprise the fast majority of computer users, and -- I imagine -- the 
vast minority of readers of USENET.  

--tom
-- 
    Tom Christiansen      tchrist@convex.com      convex!tchrist


If God had meant for us to be naked, we would have been born that way.