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SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: ZUI hatred

Re: SIGIA-L: ZUI hatred

From: Ziya Oz (ziyaoz_at_earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Mar 24 2002 - 21:46:32 EST

Lyle_Kantrovich_at_cargill.com wrote:

>> Because if you have XX number of seconds to find something, a method that
>> gets you there in time is absolutely better than one that doesn't. Much as I
>> hate command line interfaces, for instance, they are more efficient (than
>> GUIs in general) , *if* you know how to use them.
>
> Careful what you call "efficient" -- you also really have to consider
> any *cognitive load* placed on the user.

There's none, as I said " *if* you know how to use them."

> GUI's insulate the user from obscure command syntaxes and they provide
> accelerators like drag and drop. It's basic recognition vs. recall. Command
> line interfaces (CLI) are all about recall with little recognition.

I'm definitely not getting into a CLI vs. GUI argument here :-) I'm a GUI
proponent. But I'll repeat: if you *already* know CLI, it's more efficient.

> Search is like a CLI -- IF you know EXACTLY what you want/need, AND you
> know the syntax of the search tool, AND IF the thing you're looking for
> is actually in the search engine's index, THEN (and only then) are you
> likely to find what you're searching for.

And yet millions of people use a great CLI tool called Google all the time,
with more efficiency than if they didn't have any other comparable search
tool.

Best,

Ziya

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