Talk:OLPC Human Interface Guidelines

Introduction

General Comments

The page needs copy-editing. "apply this principal" [principle]; "it's" for [its], etc.

The Core Ideas

Activities, Not Applications

Instead of "much more than a semantic difference in the naming convention" say "much more than a difference in the naming convention" since semantics is about meaning, not naming. Nitpicker 21:26, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

Creation

"the best way to learn how to write a program is to write one" or perhaps to teach someone else how to write one. The aphorism that those who cannot do it teach it instead is false and pernicious. Nitpicker 21:26, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

"apply this principal" -> "... principle" Nitpicker 21:26, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

Design Fundamentals

Know Your Audience

Inexperienced

Young

International

Key Design Principles

Respell article section title to match this one. Nitpicker 23:22, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

Performance

Usability

Simplicity

Reliability

Adaptabilty

Interoperability

Mobility

Exposability

Accessibility

Add

Modelessness

Command gestures do not change meaning (at all). Since modal dialog boxes make all other command gestures fail completely, they should never be allowed. To add insult, such boxes with only one choice available have purely negative utility.

[This is in contrast to applications with multiple text editor functions inside, all different, so you can't spell check a file name, for example.]

Monotony

Only one way to do any given task. [No need to stop to decide which way to do it.]

See "The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin for more detailed and science based discussion of a full range of user interface issues. He also started the Macintosh project at Apple and thus began the Graphical User Interface craze that is still with us. Nitpicker 23:22, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

The Laptop Experience

Zoom Metaphor

With millions of years of successfully navigating back to the nest built in to our genes, geographical navigation is so natural that good implementations of zooming make systems which can be learned in literally less than one minute of training. This was a measured result for the hospital information system mentioned in Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface" for novices. For computer experts, the measured result was less than two minutes. Nitpicker 23:31, 27 October 2006 (EDT)

Bulletin Boards

We should prefer wikis to the usual add-another=message-at-the-end bulletin board since wikis permit continual improvement as well as separating the readable body of information (article) from the often tedious discussion and meta-discussion (talk page) which has a much smaller interested audience. Nitpicker 23:39, 27 October 2006 (EDT)