About Me.......My Perspective
I was a rural teenager in the Ozarks in the mid-1970s already
intrigued with what I had heard that our military and government were
doing with 'computers'. The nearest thing to a computer I could get my
hands on was mail order HeathKit electronic contraptions requiring 'programming'
in 0's and 1's via hardwire circuitry and plugged up to a black and white
TV. Well, it was possible to get them to display simple responses on the
screen, but I was quickly frustrated in attempting to simply hold data
for the next session. (I was just wanting to automate tracking of rainfall
totals on our farm.)
Later on, working my way through school at the University
of Texas, the local Austin engineering firm which employed me, invested
in a couple of Tandy TRS-80s from Radio Shack. Wow, I could actually track
rainfall with these things. With VisiCalc, a precursor to Lotus, one could
even enter formulas to calculate engineering data, print it, save it to
a floppy! I fell in love with computing at that point and then IBM produced
a 'Personal Computer', quickly named the PC. It was 1981. Katy, bar
the door.....
Now 20 years later I reflect on where the PC has come,
its promises both fulfilled and unfulfilled. Even touting, in every way
possible, the benefits of personal and business technology, the computer
industry has made very little progress relative to the total size of the
population. In other words, I've noticed, most people in the real world
are still doing things the same way they did five to 20 years ago -- regardless
of the new marvels at hand.
To me, this speaks to this industry's inherent inability
to make things that are easy to use.
In fact, even the people who find a way to use everything
from handhelds and PCs all the way up to 'enterprise' applications still
complain at least once a day about the way something works. And those
people who have the fortitude to persevere with arcane software are the
minority of the total population. Most people simply give up and either
use a particular device only when they absolutely have to (fax), or they
simply avoid it all together.
Now, having said all that, things are not as bleak as they
could be because every new generation of users turns out a higher percentage
of people who are comfortable with the idiosyncrasies of technology. But
by and large the industry has failed the majority of the people it set
out to serve, and its growth should not be tied to the number of people
entering the work force after having had years of free time to master
software applications.
The simple truth is that people who are successfully using
computers today are probably doing so in spite of, rather than because
of, user interface design. And despite all the hoopla about voice recognition,
this immature technology is a long way from going mainstream, which means
that the current state of the user interface art is likely to be with
us for quite some time.
Time brings me to my recent birthday, which in turn seems
to always puts me in mind of my father, who had a nice way way of keeping
budding egos in check. I remember a time coming home from primary school
full of more hot air than usual after receiving yet another straight A's
on a report card. This engendered the following response from my craftsman
father: "So your the best of the dummies."
At any given point in time, that's where most of us are
with computer technologies. Most of the stuff developed by this industry
was designed by people who have no interaction with the average person.
As a result, the acceptance of technology suffers.
We may have accomplished a lot, but have a long way to
go before we come anywhere near realizing our full potential
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