Moving Forward


In this chapter I presented you with a set of introductory material on designing highly useable software. If you follow the principles I develop in this chapter, your software will already be more useable than that of the competition.

In the next chapter I move to the next step and look at the real problem of modeling the real world. Life can get touchy then; remember what happened with the “desktop metaphor.” Ahh, that was an attempt to model the real world, wasn’t it? Sure, it kind of worked, sort of, but let’s leave good enough alone and skip the metaphors. Still, sometimes you have to model a business process. I take that up in the next chapter.

And finally, before you move on, here’s one more quick story of a timely nature.

REAL WORLD SCENARIO: The Atomic Clock that Wouldn’t

start example

They called it an atomic clock. But really, it’s a clock with some kind of radio-controlled device that picks up the exact time over the airwaves broadcast from some station in Colorado that has an atomic clock attached to it. My mother gave it to me as a gift a couple of years ago. She thought it was cool, and I had to admit, it was.

Until today (no kidding—the very day I was finishing writing this chapter). The clock has almost no user interface to speak of; you don’t set it. Instead, you pick your time zone from a switch on the back and let it go. When you turn it on (by inserting a battery), you just wait. The second hand ticks a little sporadically, and then suddenly the second hand starts flying, going very fast, and the clock appears to be in fast motion. The minute hand moves at about the rate of a second hand. The clock spins like this for maybe 45 minutes or however long it takes until it gets to the current time. Then it slows instantly and ticks normally. After that you never have to set it.

The clock understands daylight saving time. At least it’s supposed to. And it’s always been correct until this evening when I looked at it and it was an hour ahead. Instead of saying 6:35 it said 7:35. I figured I bumped the time zone setting on the back when I moved the clock earlier today. So I flipped the clock over and looked. It’s been about three years since I’ve had to do anything with the clock, and the instructions are long gone. But it should be straightforward. I saw that the user interface consisted of a little dial where you choose your time zone. (Only continental U.S. time zones are included, since those are the only ones within range of the electromagnetic waves shooting out of Colorado throughout our bodies). But here’s the catch: The dial has a notch for every time zone, plus a final notch for daylight saving time. How can that be? Daylight saving time is not a time zone! But the selector lets you choose Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, or Daylight Saving Time. That doesn’t make sense.

Now I know the clock automatically adjusts itself in the fall and the spring, if you somehow tell it that you live in one of the areas that practices daylight saving time (that would be nearly everywhere in the U.S. except Arizona, Hawaii, and most of Indiana). And so somehow I’m supposed to tell it which time zone I live in and (not or!) whether or not I want it to automatically adjust for daylight saving time. But how can you do that when all you have is a single dial with separate notches for each time zone plus one for daylight saving time?

I don’t know. I’m at a loss. I hope I don’t have to throw out the clock because it got messed up and I can’t figure out how to reconfigure it.

It’s just another user interface gone bad, I guess.

end example




Designing Highly Useable Software
Designing Highly Useable Software
ISBN: 0782143016
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 114

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