SKIRMISHER

Computers were supposed to make users productive in their endeavors. But how many more of us have to endure losing minutes, hours, days, months, or years of work just because your computer crashed or due to power failure and you forgot to save your work?

Geeks for lack of better or more sensible things to say would just butt-in preaching “You should save your file!” Should computer users feel guilty for not saving their work? Can’t computers save our work for us in the background automatically, as we engage in more important things like I have to write this article with the full flavor I intend it to have with my train of thoughts undisrupted? How about the confusion out of menu commands you don’t use and consequently get in the way?

As far as I’m concerned, and probably as far as you are also concerned using computers, we care only about our content or data, and what we can do with it.

What really is the root cause of the frustrations (and confusion!), short of aversion against computers? Using these machines almost on a daily basis affect how we work, learn and entertain ourselves, sometimes even how we think and behave. Our frustration in relation to our interaction with computers lie in the interface we have with them. The problem is how the interface enables our access to our content or data, and our capacity to do something with it efficiently.

Ironically, the late Jef Raskin, the creator of the Apple Macintosh, was probably the first to note that the graphical user interface (GUI) did not make computer usage any better than command line interface (CLI), nor is CLI an obsolete or useless interface to a computer. In Raskin’s word, “…the GUI paradigm has not scaled well.”

In the old days, or on the perceived-to-be-primitive command line interface (CLI), the user must remember and type specific set of commands on the keyboard to get results. Currently, since 1984 via the commercial success of the Apple Macintosh, we enjoyed what we perceive convenient graphical user interface (GUI) together with the mouse as direct manipulation input device. It was supposed to be better, if not the best, but it was not beneficial to the physically disabled, aside from the wasted time and movement just to move the mouse.

The interaction we have with computer, according to Raskin, are two phased. The first phase, called learning phase is where we become actively aware of new features, the basic procedures and then exert effort to master it. The second phase, or the automatic phase, was supposed to be where usage habits are formed. Ideally, the second phase is where users should use the computer without thought or conscious effort. The second phase is where conventional computer interfaces, GUI or CLI, leave much to be desired.

Raskin quotes, “Interface features are created to help you accomplish some task. If a feature forces you to stop thinking about your task and begin paying attention to the feature then it is said to interfere with the task, and you have not entered the automatic phase with respect to that feature. Creating interfaces that allow users to develop automaticity across all tasks should be a primary goal of interaction designers. Such interfaces will be easier to learn and use, more productive, and far more pleasant than what we have today.”

What’s the next step for the human-computer interface that will make computer usage really easier beyond the claim of marketing hype? Raskin proposed what he called The Humane Interface (THE). Quoting Raskin: “I’ve been designing a system that is unlike anything currently available, which is far easier to learn and use, and which has the promise of presenting greater stability for the future so that a person does not have to relearn as much or as often. It gets rid of the whole idea of applications, so that you purchase the abilities you need and don’t have to buy or learn any others.” Check it out at http://www.raskincenter.org and read more about it.

Too bad Jef Raskin, the author and champion of The Humane Interface, already passed away before he could prove his point against the marketing hype and revolutionize the computer as we know it, the way he did with the creation of the Apple Macintosh.

Stumble it!