?Anyone share a review of BayCHI's anti-Mac talk?
John Atwood
live in the bay area), would anyone care to post a summary of the recent
BayCHI meeting where the topic was an anti-Mac interface. I think the
premise was, "What would the resulting interface look like if you
started with assumptions opposite of those on which the Mac is based?"
John
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Andy Cohen
>
> For the benefit of those of us who are geographically challenged (don't
> live in the bay area), would anyone care to post a summary of the recent
> BayCHI meeting where the topic was an anti-Mac interface. I think the
> premise was, "What would the resulting interface look like if you
> started with assumptions opposite of those on which the Mac is based?"
I was there.
It was cool.
OK, I'll give a little more. Gentner presented a for-the-fun-of-it
reverse Mac UI design based on the opposite of many aspects of
the Mac in an attempt to try to define a new conceptual approach
past the current desktop metaphor. He did a good job at it and
I found myself generating ideas in the same way...
Jakobson then attempted(IMO)to do the same, but his presentation
style was too unstructured and he failed to spark any ideas to me.
I think the 3rd guy was Henderson (he was the only one I didnt know)
a Xerox alumni and he took the opposite stand...a little bit
on the hard side too. He came off as real establishment and
read his statements like a newscaster. He really attacked the
first two.
Then Norman got up and as usual stopped the show. He changed
his position from the original debate at CHI. Instead he took
the side of changing the operational context to find a new
conceptual model (a topic raised here a number of times). He
held up his Newton (with a new unreleased OS) as an example.
(I'll always be a Norman fan!)
During the question session a fellow in the front described
a similarity of Gentner's approach to that which was used for
the earliest Mac efforts. Norman introduced the fellow to the
audience as Jeff Raskin (the leader of the earliest Mac
designs before a certain Steve took over). Later a woman
I barely recognized stood up and raised another issue about
the method used by Gentner and Jakobson. I'm losing my
memory for a name, but I do recall she worked on the Lisa graphics
and the Apple HI guidelines.
All in all, it was a major happenin.
____Textpert Alert____
BayCHI meeting on the "anti-Mac interface:"
> Gentner presented a for-the-fun-of-it reverse Mac UI design based
> on the opposite of many aspects of the Mac in an attempt to try to
> define a new conceptual approach past the current desktop
> metaphor. He did a good job at it and I found myself generating
> ideas in the same way...
I don't suppose there's much chance of that speculative-but-
obviously-enlightening design ending up being documented on
some easily-accessible WWW page or similar? Pity. Would have
benefitted us all, not solely those for whom BayCHI meetings
are a perk. Perhaps BayCHI could ask for student volounteers
for on-the-fly note taking, transcribing, pictures etc? If the
will _is_ there, archive space and funds shouldn't be hard to
find.
Judging by Andy's description, this must've been some eye-
opening experience. Too bad so few of us are privy to that.
> Then Norman [...] held up his Newton (with a new unreleased OS)
> as an example.
What was the gist of that unreleased OS, extreme CHI-viability?
How did it manifest itself?
> During the question session a fellow in the front described a
> similarity of Gentner's approach to that which was used for the
> earliest Mac efforts. Norman introduced the fellow to the
> audience as Jeff Raskin (the leader of the earliest Mac designs
> before a certain Steve took over).
If Jef Raskin said that then, obviously, Gentner's model must to
some extent have been based on concepts exemplified in Raskin's
earlier (c:a 1981?) attempts to "make a dent" with an editor/
database OS/ program for the Apple ][ (whose name escapes me now,
but could have been "Smartbyte"?), later in the Cannon Cat product
(which had quite a following among cognescenti). Both with
filesystems based around powerful incremental bytesearch engines,
defacto nullifying the need for a _formal_ file-based OS --AS WE
KNOW IT-- (the context is in the head of the beholder, er, user).
I understand that Raskin's appliance computer idea for the
original Mac was to be in the same vein, all the entry computer
hardware anyone would ever need, complete with powerful built-in
**intuitive** text entry, -index and -mainipulation package to
abet composition and printout of text. Perchance that wouldn't
have been so bad. I am, however, not aware of that his appliance
concept stretching all the way to manipulation of graphics, which
is the real McCoy; where abstract, contextual UI models fall flat
on their faces. Too bad there are no real descriptions of those
ideas of his, and only BayCHI attendees get to hear what they
are about.
> All in all, it was a major happenin.
No need to rub it in ;-))
__Ian "Human Factors Tinker and Thinkerer" Feldman
Andy Cohen
>
> Andy Cohen <an...@sr.hp.com> wrote about the
> BayCHI meeting on the "anti-Mac interface:"
>
> > Gentner presented a for-the-fun-of-it reverse Mac UI design based
>
> I don't suppose there's much chance of that speculative-but-
> obviously-enlightening design ending up being documented on
What Don Gentner proposed was not a design per se. Rather he
presented a set of high level requirements which may lead
to a different design solution. They were very high level, and
not enough to justify design efforts. They were useful for
sparking creative thought.
My unintelligle notes provide reminders of comments about the
Mac as a typewriter metaphor yet it's not a typewriter...
He focused on language as the ideal metaphor and proposed
a better UI would use language which allows for abstraction,
synthesis and interpolation... wish I had more... Write to
BAYCHI for a copy of the newsletter and the review.
snip...
> > Then Norman [...] held up his Newton (with a new unreleased OS)
> > as an example.
>
> What was the gist of that unreleased OS, extreme CHI-viability?
> How did it manifest itself?
The point Don Norman made was that the Newton represented a change
away from desktop computing. My view of his points were that rather
then try to change the established market, one should go out and
invent new ones.
snip again...on Raskin>
>....Too bad there are no real descriptions of those
> ideas of his, and only BayCHI attendees get to hear what they
> are about.
His comments were on his technique for design idea generation and
he never got into design details of any project. Ya gotta remember
he was in the audience and was simply commenting on the panelists.
Two more points I left out; 1. I think I misspelled in my first post.
The second speaker was Jakob Nielson...sorry about that!
2. I agreed with the points that Austin Henderson presented. That
is, while the "anti-Mac" approach my be interesting it's value
was quite low.
> > All in all, it was a major happenin.
>
> No need to rub it in ;-))
Sorry, no rub intended. BTW I have to drive for at least 2 hours
to get to the meetings...they are not always worth it.
The mtg I went to before the above presented a method of
contextual inquiry which was more like role modeling of users
taken to a surrealistic extreme. We left early on that one.
Bob Weissman
Scott Wright <wrig...@ops195.lmsc.lockheed.com> wrote:
>weis...@netcom.com (Bob Weissman) wrote:
>
>>If you were a paid BayCHI member, you would have recieved Howard
>>Tamler's usual excellent summary as part of the October BayCHI
>>Newsletter.
>
>okay, I'll bite . . . how much, where do we get the membership form, and where do we send it?
>
>Scott
>
Right here. Or see our web pages at http://info.acm.com/~baychi
Thanks for asking.
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Bob Weissman
Bob Weissman <weis...@netcom.com> wrote:
-In article <468u47$q...@butch.lmsc.lockheed.com>,
-Scott Wright <wrig...@ops195.lmsc.lockheed.com> wrote:
->weis...@netcom.com (Bob Weissman) wrote:
->
->>If you were a paid BayCHI member, you would have recieved Howard
->>Tamler's usual excellent summary as part of the October BayCHI
->>Newsletter.
->
->okay, I'll bite . . . how much, where do we get the membership form, and where do we send it?
-
-Right here. Or see our web pages at http://info.acm.com/~baychi
I erred in the URL. It's really http://info.acm.org/~baychi
^^^
(www.acm.org also works)
Sorry,
== Bob
____Textpert Alert____
the distance-challenged enough not to have been there, will soon
find out what it was about. Jakob Nielsen, one of the lecturers at
that meeting, has mentioned this in one of his columns:
http://www.sun.com:80/cgi-bin/show?950701/columns/alertbox/springload.html
> As an aside, I should mention that Don Gentner and I argue
> that modes may not be so bad after all if they are part of
> much more expressive user interfaces like the strongly object-
> oriented ones we expect to see in the future. See our paper
> The Anti-Mac Interface in a forthcoming issue of the
> Communications of the ACM. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
__Ian
PS. All of JN's columns are healthy doses of Food For Thought[tm]: