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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!"

4 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
  2. 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
  3. 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 :-)

  4. 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.