On 24 Jun 2008, at 11:27, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
The layout or look of the dialogs might be different, but fundamentaly they work identical. This is what I'm trying to get across. Any Mac or Windows user will be able to use the fpGUI dialogs without training!
I don't doubt that for second. Just like in case someone would move around all the furniture in your house and hang all paintings in a different place, you'd still find your way around and all your stuff back. But you'd lose the advantage of all acquired automatisms. You'd probably hit your toes right after getting out of bed because before there was no table leg in that place. And for a while you'd probably focus on the wall every time you enter a particular room because it doesn't look like what you unconsciously expected it to be.
For some time you may even "see" (out of the corner of your eye when walking by) the old painting there unless you consciously look at it. I had that when my bike was stolen: I didn't use it very often, but I passed it in the hallway every morning on my way to work. Several times at work I had a weird feeling and thought I should properly check my bike on the way home because there appeared to be something amiss. Only after 4 days I finally managed think of properly looking and saw that it was gone. The brain is really good at filling in details you expect to be there.
So it's not primarily about being unable to use something (except in really extreme cases, or possibly for people like my mother), but about diverting attention/time from performing some task to how to perform it.
You just need to *read* the screen!!
Exactly my point. The sooner you become oblivious to the interface and can let muscle memory (mostly) take over, the better. Your brain also doesn't really read the screen half the time, it just predicts what will be in which place based on past experience and if something different happens, you'll probably only realise it after performing the action. Just try changing one of your applications so that it occasionally switches the order of yes/no buttons in dialog boxes. Make sure you don't do it for the "Erase hard drive" one though :)
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