Re: Self Documenting Interfaces

[Per Lewau <perle lysator liu se>]

On Fri, 24 Jul 1998, Dan Kaminsky wrote:

> I'm gonna take back my claim that voicing tours is preferable.  However, a
> text-annotated visual tour of a program and what it can do *IS* a good
> thing.  There's no better way to learn an app than to watch it in use,
> rewind, fast forward, etc.

The best way to learn something is to do it. Provide instead of visual
playbacks guided tours of common operations. ("...and on the right we see
the famous Print button. By pressing that button we can produce hardcopies
of the document" :))

A somewhat well-known principle is that you see and forget, you hear and
remember and you do and understand.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Per Lewau (perle@lysator.liu.se) Student of Computer Science at
				 Linköping University, 
				 Sweden. 
"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?"
						- Hobbes