

Article 1653 of comp.cog-eng:
Path: mimsy!haven!aplcen!samsung!umich!srvr1!cicada.engin.umich.edu!zarnuk
>From: [email-masked] (Paul Steven Mccarthy)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: aesthetics of the interface
Message-ID: <[email-masked]>
Date: 4 May 90 07:58:31 GMT
References: <[email-masked]> <[email-masked]>
Sender: [email-masked] (CAEN Netnews)
Organization: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Just to pipe in a word on the side of the "techies" here...

Have you ever tried to present an aesthetically pleasing and
yet functional interface on a 25x80 grid of cells, where you
may not even be lucky enough to have any line-drawing characters
available?  On MacIntoshes, or large (expensive) graphics work-
stations many more options are available, but the bread and 
butter of the industry is still tied to the old 25x80 grid
(generally without any assumptions about color if you want
to maintain portability).  Give it a little more time, folks.
Your concerns and complaints are certainly warranted, but the
price-tags on the hardware necessary for wide-spread "beautiful"
applications is still a little out-of-reach for most small to 
medium sized organizations.

>From my standpoint as a system developer, I see immediate benefits
from quantitative studies of user-interface complexity.  This
is the only way that I can demonstrate to upper management that
it does, indeed, pay off in the long run to develop systems that
have consistent, understandable user-interfaces.  This is also
the only way that I can hope to get programmers who have been 
trained in the bare-bones basics about what is "friendly" vs. 
what is "hostile".

Aesthetics will come, have no fear, but we aren't quite there
just yet.  I remember a quote that was attributed to Henry
Ford during the early days of the automobile: "You can have
any color you'd like -- as long as it's black".  Cars have 
come quite a ways since then, computer systems will too.

---Paul...