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Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen

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Start your free trial Usability Engineering Figure 6 A simple calculator operated by direct manipulation. Unfortunately, direct manipulation interfaces may be harder to use for some disabled users than the traditional, text-only interfaces were [Newell 1993]. Users with motor difficulties may have no problems operating a keyboard with its discrete nature: Even if you do not hit a key exactly right, the character still appears perfectly on the screen (and you can backspace if you hit the wrong key). In contrast, direct manipulation is much more dependent on fine control of a continuous input device, the mouse. As another example, blind users cannot see icons and objects on the screen and will thus have trouble manipulating them [Griffith 1990]. Consid- erable research efforts are underway to solve or alleviate these problems, using various techniques like audible representations of the various windows on a screen [Edwards 1988; Mynatt and Edwards 1992], but in general it does seem that graphical user interfaces are a detriment to this particular category of users. 3.5 Next-Generation Interfaces The next generation of user interfaces is already under develop- ment in laboratories around the world [Nielsen 1993a]. It is likely that the trend from the previous generations will continue, and that the dimensionality of user interfaces will increase from the current 2.5 to a full 3 (or more) dimensions. Common ways to add a dimen- sion to user interfaces include adding time (in the form of anima- tion [Baecker et al 1991; Robertson et al. 1993]), sound [Gaver 1989] 62 Generations of User Interfaces or voice [Tucker and Jones 1991], as well as a true third spatial dimension in the form of virtual reality systems [Biocca 1992; Mercurio and Erickson 1990; Pausch 1991; Rheingold 1991; Thomas and Stuart 1992]. Much of the original vision of highly personal and portable computing was described in a pioneering article introducing a hypothetical "dynabook" (dynamic book) computer [Kay and Goldberg 1977]. Even though current personal computers have achieved graphical user interfaces and even some portability, they are still far from the early ideal, where computers would be as easy to use and to carry around as books. The two easiest predictions regarding the next generation of user interfaces are thus that they will include higher dimensionality with more media types and that they will be highly portable and personal, while utilizing cellular modems and other communica- tions technology to achieve tight connectivity. In addition, it is likely that next-generation user interfaces will be more object-oriented in terms of their functionality and not just in terms of information manipulation, as has been the case with many graphical user interfaces as discussed on page 58. Traditional operating systems were based on the notion of applica- tions that were used by the user one at a time. Even window systems and other attempts at application integration typically forced the user to "be" in one application at a time, even though other applications were running in the background. Also, any given document or data file was only operated on by one applica- tion at a time. Some systems allow the construction of pipelines connecting multiple applications, but even these systems still basi- cally have the applications act sequentially on the data. The application model is constraining to users who have integrated tasks that require multiple applications. Approaches to alleviate this mismatch in the past have included integrated software [Nielsen et al 1986] and composite editors that could deal with multiple data types in a single document. No single program is likely to satisfy all computer users, however, no matter how tightly 63

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