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The Humane Environment

Posted by michael on from the society-for-prevention-of-cruelty-to-computer-users dept.

rael9real writes "Jeff Raskin, developer of the MacOS and author of The Humane Interface [ed.: which was reviewed last year], has been hard at work with several others coding The Humane Environment. They have a developers edition out for Christmas. It runs on Mac OS 9/X. Reading the manual, it is basically a text editor/Python IDE, but it does seem to incorporate some neat ideas in the field. I can't wait to get home and try it out!"

17 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. And here's the crux of the matter... by Hayzeus · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the website:

    Important observation: You cannot make an interface better without making it different (that's obvious).

    Herein lies the problem: an interface that requires relearning can, at least in a sense, be said to be flawed. Time that has to be spent up front learning a new interface is widely perceived as wasted time. In order to be accepted, interfaces generally have to be incremental improvements on an existing paradigm. Radically new interfaces, no matter how much they improve on existing UIs, are almost certainly doomed to failure.

    There are obvious exceptions. GUIS were such an improvement over CLIs (at least for the masses) that they were readily accepted. I guess the same could really be said for the ascendancy of the CLI over batch jobs.

    Maybe a direct neural interface...

    --

    Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
    1. Re:And here's the crux of the matter... by Hayzeus · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I think you forget, as most people seem to, that all learning takes effort. Even when your gear is hooked straight into your brain do you have to spend substantial time to learn how to use it.

      No -- I am aware that any interface takes time to learn, and I assume that a neural interface would be no exception. But the real issue is whether the perceived investment in time spent learning something new is worth the perceived benefit of the interface. The more radical the change, the higher the perceived value needs to be. Note the term "perceived" -- in order for an interface to succeed, a sufficient number of people need to see it as potentially worth the trouble of learning; else I would expect it to fade into obscurity.

      --

      Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
    2. Re:And here's the crux of the matter... by Mournblade · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, as anyone who has had a child can attest, the nipple is not intuitive. The breastfeeding process has to be learned both by the mother, and the child.

      Now, maybe you weren't referring to breastfeeding, in which case I may agree with you.... ;)

    3. Re:And here's the crux of the matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Herein lies the problem: an interface that requires relearning can, at least in a sense, be said to be flawed. Time that has to be spent up front learning a new interface is widely perceived as wasted time.

      This is truth, but a truth so academic as to be of almost no value. By decoupling a task from the way in which that task is performed -as you are implicitly doing-, you end up with an abstraction called "interface" that is so broad that is covers only the most basic applications.

      To separate these two is a mistake (often) because the interface and the task are intimately coupled. Another way of putting it is that radically new tasks call for radically new interfaces and vice versa. What fails is not radically new interfaces per se -- but radically new interfaces without a corresponding new task.

      By your argument, because both PhotoShop and MS Word use more or less the same "interface" (using the word in the bland way that you use it), it should be easy to learn Word once you know Photoshop and vice versa. But in reality, the superficial similarity of both interfaces helps only a tiny bit in mastering the tasks that these applications perform. The learning curve is in the task: not in the interface.

      Conversely, it does not take long for a WordPerfect 5.1 DOS user to master Microsoft Word. Not because the "interface paradigms" (ummm, okay) are similar; they could hardly differ more! But, because the tasks are similar.

      Form follows function and function is shaped by form.

  2. the rest of the problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    And the real problem with that is that the windowing interface has not had even minor changes in almost 20 years. Windows 3x was basically the same as what we have now (as far as GUIs).

    The only incremental innovation in the last 20 years was a "start button/quickbar".

    That's it. That's the one great accomplishment in 20 years.

  3. This is part by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This is part of Raskin's interface project, but the main push is for a consumer ZUI.

  4. what's it look like ? by Tom · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'm a visual being - what does it look like? Some screenshots with a bit of explanation would be nice. If I had a mac, I'd download and look for myself, but since I don't...

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  5. Interesting, but.... by freeze128 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would like to see a screenshot of why this interface is so different, but there doesn't seem to be one on the website. I also wish there were a PC version, or at least some sore of interactive demo.

    It makes me wonder.... Is this the same guy who thought all files should be arranged by association, instead of in a tree structure? That would just make things SLOPPY. I sure hope this Humane interface doesn't promote sloppiness!

  6. OT: The SourceForge blog? by The+Bungi · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Now, this is interesting (and completely unrelated to the article, but still). Is doing a website like that on SF a violation of their terms? After all, it's about 1/5th software development there.

    Seems to me that's a cheap and unslashdottable way to get a homepage!

  7. vi everywhere by PotatoMan · · Score: 2, Interesting
    When I read the THE manual, I couldn't help but feel he was reinventing the vi command set and using it as the main interface to the system.


    But, since Jef is a bright guy, I'm going to wait and see where he's going with this. The THE editor is just a single example of what's in his head. I think it's a mistake to generalize from this example to the entire THE system.


    Also, perhaps what's going on is that a fellow who spent his life thinking about how ordinary people use computers has simply found a systematic explanation for why vi is still so popular (although I'm an Emacs user myself).


    The vi command set was designed to minimize the number of characters sent and recieved by the relatively slow terminals used at the time. Perhaps it also encapsulates a 'minimum effort/maximum result' way of thinking. In which case, it's no surprise that Jef would rediscover it.

  8. One quick argument... by digerata · · Score: 3, Interesting
    This is from the review by Justin Hollands on his website. I have to disagree here.

    Let's discuss some examples. One of Raskin's ideas is that we use the same core set of elementary operations for many purposes (one might say across applications). Such operations include: selection, indication, activation, moving, and copying. If we use the same small set of operations across applications, we can learn a keyboard shortcut or have special purpose keys for each, rather than look them up via menu selection using a pointing device. Why do we have all these special-purpose menu items peppering the top of our displays? Raskin argues that they are unnecessary. In a mistaken attempt to provide us with lots of functionality (feature bloat), designers have cobbled together the elementary operations as menu items. But if the elementary operations are well learned, then a rapid series of command keystrokes will be faster than the menu look up and selection.

    Revolutionary, right?

    Right off the bat, I think of both Windows and Mac (not a GUI linux user) and how they already have much of this built in. On windows, ctrl-x,c,v cut copy and paste respectively. The equivalent in mac os, I believe, is command-x,c,v. Now there are many more like this such as ctrl-a for selecting all items. And the shortcuts work in Word, Explorer, EditPlus, Photoshop, etc. As long as the developer(s) of the application follow the standard, they are available. So that is where this argument is moot. Its not a new idea but one that has been implemented sporadically across applications.

    Also, many would agree that the concept of keyboard shortcuts is only awakened in the advanced user. A person that is new to the computer is going to rely almost exlusively on the mouse. Point 'n Click, right? Creating a standard set of keyboard shortcuts (even when there already is an unwritten standard) will not help the beginning computer user.

    I don't know, I'm still going to read the book though.

    --

    1;
  9. Jef Raskin Doesn't Get It by JavaJoint · · Score: 5, Interesting


    I'll tell ya a Jef Raskin story.

    Sometime in the 1980's - West Coast Computer Faire...

    Jef is on a panel, and the talk is about UI, or the
    future of computing, or some such.

    Jef states that he doesn't see the need for User Groups.
    He doesn't like the idea that people that own computers
    get together to help each other out.

    He said "You don't see Washing Machine User Groups". He may have mentioned the toaster as well.

    To this day, I felt he misses a fundamental point:

    You don't do your taxes on a washing machine.

    You don't write books with your toaster.

    A lot of what we do with computers (some of us,
    anyways...) is inherently cerebral, and social.

    OF COURSE we are going to get together to
    talk about them, in person or online.

    You can dumb down a UI as much as you want,
    hide as many details as possible, in an attempt
    to spoon feed the masses of the Blinking Twelve.
    But the fact remains: if there's some thinking
    involved with the task at hand, users will want to
    get together to share experiences.

    So Jef, take back the example about the Washing Machine :-)

  10. Ironic, isn't it... by wirelessbuzzers · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... that some of his keystroke series in THE are significantly more awkward on a dvorak keyboard... ... which *is* significantly faster, trust me, if you have the time to learn it... ... which is about what he claims that THE is...

    I think I'll just stick with my odd blend of CLI and GUI (called MacOS X) and my dvorak keyboard. At least I can customize the bindings in emacs.

    ( \begin{rant}[parenthetical]

    Why doesn't everyone use these? At least the dvorak keyboard? If computers came with them instead of QWERTY at least as a standard option, kids would be able to learn to type this way and wouldn't even have to relearn. Seems like it would offer a greater improvement in speed than THE could.

    \end{rant} )

    --
    I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
    1. Re:Ironic, isn't it... by teridon · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Just out of curiousity, what happens when you sit down at someone else's computer, and they don't have a dvorak layout? How long does it take you to "remember" your QWERTY ...origins?

      --
      I hold it, that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing. -- Thomas Jefferson
  11. Re:Woah! by jacobcaz · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I especially like this excerpt from the manual. Seems like an ineffective way to communicate key-presses:

    USING THE KEYBOARD

    To make keyboard operations clear without having to write something like, "in order to type a capital 'A' press and hold the shift key while typing the letter 'a' ", we use a simple shorthand. A backslash after a key name (\) indicates a key going down, and the slash (/) indicates a key going up. Thus, the normal way to type a capital "A", is to perform this sequence of actions:

    Shift \ a \ a / Shift /

    Inside this notation we do not use quotes around the names of keys, and individual letters always appear in lower case. In the manual we will not need to use either slash in our examples, so there will be no ambiguity.

  12. Am I alone? by umoto · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been writing software for most of my life, so I've logged a lot of hours typing on a keyboard. The observation I've made is that my hands are a lot more comfortable if I only have to push one key at a time and if I move my hands (not just my fingers) a lot.

    Jef is advocating the use of shift-space to enter a special mode, then entering commands while still holding the shift key. All this is designed to keep the hands on home row. This seems awfully uncomfortable.

    Not long ago the "happy hacker" keyboard came out. My boss got one. At that time I realized I may be one of the few geeks who prefers the ten cursor keys over vi/emacs key sequences. Am I alone? :-)

  13. Raskin does the Canon Cat, again. Nobody cares. by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Raskin has built this text editor several times before. The first implementation was on an Apple II, and his LEAP technology was first seen there. The best known implementation was the Canon Cat, which was a typewriter-like standalone word processor device. The Canon Cat came out in 1987, which was way too late to launch a "smart typewriter". It was on the market for about six months before Canon pulled it due to weak sales.

    Raskin's critique of scrollbars for navigation makes some good points, but that was before mousewheel scrolling.