Top 8 Reasons HCI is in its Stone Age

UltimaGuy writes "This Editorial describes 8 reasons why HCI (Human Computer Interaction) is in its stone age. It laments about screen corners, filesystem, GUI Design and also 'spatialness'. "

Comments

Not so great? But what about focus-stealing.

[Kosmatos]

"After more than 20 years of research, development and competition in the field of HCI, not one single leading operating system developing company has come up with an OS that utilizes the four corners of the screen."
 
  "Browse the internet by hitting the screen corner? Check mail in the screen corner? Get Info in the screen corner? System preferences in the screen corner? Switching applications in the screen corner?"
 
The first and most obvious problem with this concept is that the user must know what each corner does. You should not expect the user to remember this by heart. Therefore, you have to either allocate screen real-estate to show it (doh!), or pop up the information about what happens when you move or click here (doh!). If you allocate screen real-estate, then that should be clickable as well. Doesn't sound like such a great idea anymore, does it? If you pop up information, then you just made your interface more annoying because the mouse sometimes tends to end up in the corners by mistake.
 
  "Ray Charles figured that out. Stevie Wonder figured that out. And they would probably make a better design team than any money-driven market thugs."
 
Gee, which market thug are you thinking of? :)
 
I wish Microsoft would fix their most fundamental user interface problem: Never, ever, ever, ever, ever steal my input directed to one window and start providing it to another. I don't care if the applications are not playing ball properly. Don't allow it. How many times have I hit "enter" while typing, say, in a word processor, but just before I hit "enter" a message box pops up and my enter key is swallowed by it, taking the default action, and I don't even know what happened because I never got the chance to see the question. Or my password being entered into one window's field but ending up in another. Bad.

Um, this guy is off...

[Godeke]

So I read the article, and all I find is a diatribe by an apparent madman. Why are we taking user interface design from a person who tries to send "rotated and cropped" pictures to blind musicians? I thought at first it was an attempt at irony, but apparently it is just part of the stream of consciousness that produced misused angle quotes, improper grammatical constructs and just plain odd statements.

Examine his (central) point about corners, for example. Yes, corners *can* be hit easily with the mouse. Isn't that a long way to travel to achieve ones goals? His point about scrolling with the spacebar press is on target (and a feature I appreciated), but then he goes on a tangent about the biggest key on the keyboard producing "nothingness". Considering that each and every word must be separated from each and every other word with "nothingness", I fail to see where its place of honor is diminished by the lack of pixels being illuminated by its use.

Crying shame too: usability *is* important and should be a central consideration. Sadly, I don't think this guy is the one to much of that consideration. Maybe once he grasps the utilization of natural language a bit more, I would consider his ideas on more natural interfaces.