Re: Testing & A Suggestion :)

[Dick Karpinski <dick cfcl com>]

robsc is said to have remarked:

Wouldn't it be great if you could just sit down and figure it out?
Actually, the question I'm thinking is: Is windows really all that
simple? Can people learn it that easily? Or, is it just that it's so
incredibly common, that most anyone knows how to navigate through MS
os's because they are so simple? (It's an impossible/tough question to
prove: you have to get computer 'virgins' to try each GUI)

To which I respond:

Yes.

Windows is only simple compared to what came before, like OS/360.

When that interface was first introduced in 1984, it was the best change
I had ever seen in over twenty years of computing. An average guy stood
some chance of getting something useful produced in less than a week.
Not much chance and not much produced but much better than before. The
Apple sales force claimed that a new owner of a Mac could feel in control
of her machine within an hour. Mostly true. Totally remarkable. Thoroughly
impossible with CP/M or MS/DOS or OS/360 machines.

But you don't have to test on virgins if you read the cognitive psychology
literature and understand it. One prominent researcher designed a system 
for a single database application which was orders of magnitude easier 
to learn and use for utter novices. In his case, the novices were 
executives who wouldn't touch a computer keyboard. The database was a 
hospital information system. Learning time (until users were competent 
and confident) was measured for Apricus at under one minute. Computer 
experts generally got it in less than two minutes, but they had more to 
unlearn. See chapter Six of The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin.

Dick