Just saw Aza Raskin’s post to the Humanized Weblog regarding “Enso 2.0″…
…and I hope I’m wrong, but I’m filled with a sense of impending doom. The champions of amodality are turning to the Dark Side.
Enso shouldn’t make you type all of “open” every time
Yes it should. If a command is important enough to use repeatedly, the user will get very fast at typing it. If it’s so important, make the command short (and “open” is short enough).
Enso should gracefully handle the case where there’s no convenient place to enter text
Give us enough commands that we never have to leave our editor, then. (Remember The Humane Environment? The Canon Cat?) Don’t introduce unneeded complexity into the Enso interface itself.
Enso shouldn’t require you to type out text, select it, and then run a command when you’d rather run the command and then enter the text (think calculate)
After enough uses, my thought process would be: “OK, ‘60 * 60 * 24 * 365′… [highlight] [command ‘calculate’]”. “Calculate” is, in my mind, the “turn this equation into the number I actually need” command. I don’t want to be typing “calculate” while trying to remember a complicated series of numbers and symbols.
You could even type the parts that were most memorable to you. For instance, “offox” would match to “open firefox”, and “trantojap” would match to “translate to japanese “.
And yet in the same article, they complain about Unix “df” and “tar -xvzf”. Again, make them type it. They’ll type more, but they’ll think less (and disrupt their actual task less).
it is cumbersome to type “translate to french outrageous accent”, and impossible to type “calculate 4+(2+.5)^3/5? (shifted characters aren’t type-able while holding down the command key).
Again, I’m thinking “‘outrageous accent’ in french”, not “french outrageous accent”. The current system of highlighting and converting to the desired result is just fine. And what if I need to translate something to French, German, and Japanese?
Novice users can type out the easy-to-learn-and-remember full command name (”open”). Long time users can just use one-keystroke commands (”o”). Thanks to our new learning algorithm (I’ll come back to this in another section), those shortcuts will train themselves to your use patterns, yet never shift around on you. This means that the time cost for choosing a command is greatly reduced. Using Caps Lock “o” for open is key-wise equivalent to a hot key for calling up a dedicated launcher! Good design erases the line between beginners and experts.
And yet you’re having experts type a completely different phrase than the beginners. An “expert mode” that’s the result of an adaptive algorithm is no better than one that’s designed into the software.
Our argument is that the state of the system (e.g., that your keystrokes are going into the entry area and not into the application) will almost always be the user’s locus of attention. The entry area will never appear unless the user actively asks for it, so they are never surprised, never enter the information in the wrong spot, and never make mode errors.
Note the “almost” in “almost always be the locus of attention”. The Humanized offices probably don’t have children running around them, but my house does. Distraction is always waiting to strike at the least convenient moment. And when I return to the machine, I might not really start typing prose into that waiting calculate window, but I’m going to stop and think about whether it’s open. I came to Enso to get away from that sort of stuff!
So we added a “resume” command to the design. If you are trying to interact with something else on your system, then Enso fades away with a transparent message telling about the “resume” command. The resume command does exactly what it sounds like: it resumes the state of Enso exactly where you left it.
Doesn’t help in the situation I just described - I haven’t interacted with anything other than the keyboard.
you’ll only use the resume command when you know exactly what’s in there, i.e., that it is your locus of attention (even if it is invisible). How is this different than the invisible buffer that is copy and paste? Only in one important way: That resume is not being used for storing important content that might not exist elsewhere.
They’re proposing typing entire e-mails into Enso. I’d call that important content.
A lot of our readers have been arguing persuasively that we were too heavy-handed in dismissing all adaptive interfaces. If the algorithm respects habituation, then we have no right to complain.
…
Eventually, you’ll want to be able to go to any computer and have Enso know who you are, so that all of your habits can be preserved (Weave, anyone?). But, that’s for much later.
Why introduce this unneeded complexity? A user’s expertise and habits are stored in their own grey matter, and they carry that with them to every computer they use, networked or not.
Another post on the Humanized blog talks about the importance of software projects having a benevolent dictator… It’s time for Humanized to show their benevolence (and their authority). Don’t let the slow typists among your users ruin Enso for everybody.
[ICR] | 02-Feb-08 at 3:17 am | Permalink
“If a command is important enough to use repeatedly, the user will get very fast at typing it.”
I would echo your worries here. It distresses me when people want to shorten everything down to two letters to open anything. However, I guess something to be mindful is that the system is flexible enough to easily allow you to create your own good shorthands. “o” can easily become synonymous with “open” in peoples minds.
“Give us enough commands that we never have to leave our editor, then”
Surely you can see that’s far beyond the scope of Enso - that’s writing a whole new environment and that project is being/has been done at least twice (I think).
“After enough uses, my thought process would be: “OK, ‘60 * 60 * 24 * 365′… [highlight] [command ‘calculate’]”. “Calculate” is, in my mind, the “turn this equation into the number I actually need” command. I don’t want to be typing “calculate” while trying to remember a complicated series of numbers and symbols.”
If you’re not in an environment with a text input - and I frequently am - I have to think “open notepad” first which has exactly the same effect of knocking numbers out of my brain except worse, because opening a text editor has nothing to do with calculating a sum. The process of “calculate … this expression” fits much more naturally in these cases. For the occasions where a text editor is open the old model also works, type the expression, select, calculate, enter. (Just the addition of “enter” there).
“And yet in the same article, they complain about Unix “df” and “tar -xvzf”.”
I am inclined to agree again. But also again, be mindful that the user has chosen these shorthands, not the system.
“Again, I’m thinking “‘outrageous accent’ in french”, not “french outrageous accent””
Again, see my argument for calculate.
“And yet you’re having experts type a completely different phrase than the beginners.”
An “expert mode” is one in which you have to switch to a completely different environment to do more advanced things. This is the software working as the user wants it to.
“…when I return to the machine…I’m going to stop and think about whether it’s open.”
I guess the solution would be to tap “Esc” as you get up - not that hard a thing to train yourself to do (I’ve trained myself easily to type “pause track” at the drop of a hat). You can then use the “resume” command if you need to.
“They’re proposing typing entire e-mails into Enso. I’d call that important content.”
To me it seemed they were proposing you type long emails in a text editor, select it then use the “email to” command.
I think you missed this very important part of the article:
“What happens if you want to calculate some text that you’ve already typed?
Select it, hold down Caps Lock, type “cal”, and release. The entry area will be pre-filled with your text. Hit enter the result is inserted at your selection.”
It’s the answer to a lot of your qualms.
“A user’s expertise and habits are stored in their own grey matter, and they carry that with them to every computer they use, networked or not.”
Yes, but a naive Enso is not consistent because it can’t be. Different people have different things installed, so a different number of commands appear on different machines and at different times on the same machine. The adaptive algorithm suggested deals with that in a very nice way - it aids habituation rather than breaks it.
“Don’t let the slow typists among your users ruin Enso for everybody.”
Interestingly it’s not the slow typists, it’s the lazy ones. And I suspect they are perfectly adequate
jay | 02-Feb-08 at 10:02 am | Permalink
jay: “Give us enough commands that we never have to leave our editor, then”
[ICR]: Surely you can see that’s far beyond the scope of Enso - that’s writing a whole new environment and that project is being/has been done at least twice (I think).
“Never” is an exaggeration, of course - I’d be quite satisfied with the already-proposed e-mail command, and maybe some equivalent to curl.
jay: “After enough uses, my thought process would be: “OK, ‘60 * 60 * 24 * 365′… [highlight] [command ‘calculate’]”. “Calculate” is, in my mind, the “turn this equation into the number I actually need” command. I don’t want to be typing “calculate” while trying to remember a complicated series of numbers and symbols.”
[ICR]: If you’re not in an environment with a text input - and I frequently am - I have to think “open notepad” first which has exactly the same effect of knocking numbers out of my brain except worse, because opening a text editor has nothing to do with calculating a sum. …
I am rarely in an environment without text input, so it makes it hard for me to see that side of the argument. You’re certainly right that opening an editor first is just as bad in that situation.
jay: “…when I return to the machine…I’m going to stop and think about whether it’s open.”
[ICR]: I guess the solution would be to tap “Esc” as you get up - not that hard a thing to train yourself to do (I’ve trained myself easily to type “pause track” at the drop of a hat). You can then use the “resume” command if you need to.
I guess I missed that they were proposing to use Esc that way. That would indeed help, and I’m sure I could habituate to it.
[ICR]: I think you missed this very important part of the article:
“What happens if you want to calculate some text that you’ve already typed?
Select it, hold down Caps Lock, type “cal”, and release. The entry area will be pre-filled with your text. Hit enter the result is inserted at your selection.”
It’s the answer to a lot of your qualms.
No, I did see that. I guess I’m just really, really repulsed by the thought of that Enter key after everything. Before Enso (and unfortunately during, occasionally), I had to use the Windows Run menu. (Windowkey-R, type command, Enter, hope the window you’d been working in gets focus again because sometimes it doesn’t.) This hearkens back to those dark days.
jay: “Don’t let the slow typists among your users ruin Enso for everybody.”
[ICR]: Interestingly it’s not the slow typists, it’s the lazy ones. And I suspect they are perfectly adequate
I have no objection to the good (productive) kind of lazy. But I’m really concerned that people’s shortcuts are going to start getting in the way of legitimate commands.
Anyway, you make some good points, good enough that now I have to wait until the new Enso release to see if my fears even come to pass. (Of course, by then it will be too late to stop it. :)