Graduating Users from Beginners to Intermediates

Donald Norman (1989) provides another useful perspective on command vectors. Norman uses the phrases, information in the world and information in the head to refer to different ways that users access information. When he talks about information in the world, Norman refers to situations in which there is sufficient information available by looking in an environment or interface to accomplish something. A kiosk showing a printed map of downtown, for example, is information in the world. We don't have to bother remembering exactly where the Transamerica Building is, because we can find it by reading a map. Opposing this is information in your head, which refers to knowledge that you have learned or memorized, like the back-alley shortcut that isn't printed on any map. Information in your head is much faster and easier to use than information in the world, but you are responsible for ensuring that you learn it, that you don't forget it, and that it stays up to date. Information in the world is slower and more cumbersome, but very dependable.

World vectors and head vectors

A pedagogic vector is necessarily filled with information in the world, which is why it is a world vector. Conversely, keyboard accelerators constitute a head vector because using them requires the user to have filled his head with information about the functions and their keyboard equivalents. World vectors are required by beginners and by more experienced users accessing advanced or seldom-used functions. Head vectors are used extensively by intermediates and even more so by experts.

For example, when you first moved into your neighborhood, you probably had to use a map—a world vector. After living there a couple of days, you abandoned the map because you had learned how to get home—a head vector. On the other hand, even though you know your house intimately, when you have to adjust the temperature setting on the water heater, you need to read the instructions—a world vector—because you didn't bother to memorize them when you moved in.

Our relationship to our software works the same way. We find ourselves easily memorizing facilities and commands that we use frequently and ignoring the details of commands that we use only rarely. This means that any vector that is used frequently will automatically become a candidate for a head vector. After daily use, for example, we no longer really read the menus, but find what we need by recognizing patterns: Pull down the second menu and select the bottom-most item in the next-to-last section. Pattern recognition is much faster for the human mind than reading is. We read only to verify our choices.

Memorization vectors

New users are happy with world vectors, but as they progress to become perpetual intermediates they begin to develop their working set, and the (pedagogic) world vectors will start to seem tedious. Users like to find more immediate head vectors for the contents of their working sets. This is a natural and appropriate user desire and, if our software is to be judged easy-to-use, we must satisfy it. The solution consists of two components. First, we must provide a head vector in parallel to the world vector, and second, we must provide a path by which the user can learn the head vector corresponding to each world vector. This path is a vector itself: a memorization vector.

There are several ways to provide memorization vectors for users. The least effective method is to mention the vector only in the user documentation. The slightly better, but still ineffective method is to mention it in the program's main online help system. These methods put the onus of finding the memorization vector on the user, and also leave it up to the user to realize that she needs to find it in the first place.

Superior memorization vectors are built right into the interface, or are at least offered in the program's interface by way of its own world vector. The latter can be minimally implemented just by adding a menu item to the standard Help menu called Shortcuts. This item takes the user directly to a section of Help that describes available shortcuts. This method has the benefit of being explicit and, therefore, pedagogic. New users can see that multiple command vectors exist and that there is an easy-to-find resource for learning them. All programs should have this Shortcut item.

DESIGN TIP 

Offer shortcuts from the Help menu.

Integrating memorization vectors directly into the main interface is less problematic than it sounds. There are already two on the menus of most programs. As defined by Microsoft, a typical Windows application has two keyboard head vectors: mnemonics and accelerators. In Microsoft Word, for example, the mnemonic for Save is Alt+F+S. The memorization vector for this mnemonic is achieved visually by underlining the F and S in the menu title and the menu item, respectively. The accelerator for Save is Ctrl+S. Ctrl+S is noted explicitly on the right side of the menu on the same line as the Save item, which acts as a memorization vector.

Neither of these vectors intrudes on the new user. He may not even notice their existence until he has the opportunity to use the program at some length—that is, until he becomes an intermediate user. Eventually, he will notice these visual hints and will wonder about their meaning. Most reasonably intelligent people—most users—will get the accelerator connection without any help. The mnemonic is slightly tougher, but once the user is clued into the use of the Alt meta-key, either by direction or accident, the idiom is extremely easy to remember and use wherever it occurs.

If you look ahead at Figure 30-4 in Chapter 30, you can see an excellent technique whereby small icons are used to provide memorization vectors for transitioning from menus to toolbar—butcons (iconic buttons). The icon identifying each function or facility should be shown on every artifact of the user interface that deals with it: each menu, each butcon, each dialog box, every mention in the help text, and every mention in the printed documentation. A memorization vector formed of visual symbols in the interface is the most effective technique, yet it remains under-exploited in the industry at large.