From: jfw@jfwhome.FUNHOUSE.COM (John F. Woods)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre
Subject: Re: Human Interface Survey
Message-ID: <1991Sep17.023609.7569@jfwhome.FUNHOUSE.COM>
Date: 17 Sep 91 02:36:09 GMT
References: <16303@goofy.Apple.COM>
Organization: Misanthropes-R-Us
In <16303@goofy.Apple.COM> cep@apple.com (Chris Warren) writes:
Dear fellow netters,

I am an human interface designer at Apple Computer who is doing some research on people's mental model of networks. To this end I wanted to throw up the following questions for public responses. I am not interested in any particular answer. In fact, I want is to to get as many different answers as possible, no matter how strange.

Anyway, here are the questions.

Suppose you are trying to explain the network to someone who is completely unfamiliar with computers.

1) How would you describe it to them?

Well, if you picture a large cat, stretched from New York to San Francisco, then when we paint the tail blue, a fire hydrant can be used as a planter to hold daisies. Arf! Arf! Arf!
2) Would you use any analogies to objects or ideas in the real world?
The what?
3) How would you describe various tasks that people use networks for? (Netnews, Telnet, FTP, Hooking up to a database, EMail, Printing to a shared printer, etc)
I would probably describe these tasks by inserting a gate dip oscillator into their nose.
4) If you answered yes to question 2 then how do these tasks fit into the analogy?
Let us consider first the two dimentional case where 
	F = a dx^2 + 2b dx dy + c dy^2
and
	F' = A dX^2 + 2B dX dY + C dY^2
and suppose that x and y may be expressed as functions of X and Y so that F becomes F' under the transformation. Of course dx = (del x/del X) dX + (del x/del Y) dY. Now when x, y, dx, and dy are replaced in F by their values in X and Y and when one equates coefficients in this new form of F with those of F' one obtains 
a(del x/del X)^2 + 2b del x/del X del y/del Y + c(del y/del X)^2 = A
a del x/del X del x/del Y + b(del x/del X del y/del Y +
        del x/del Y del y/del X) + c del y/del X del y/del Y = B
a(del x/del Y)^2 + 2b(del x/del Y del y/del Y) + c(del y/del Y)^2 = C.
5) How would you explain to someone how to find something on the net that they were looking for? (Example the ftp site that has program X)
The rubber brain on my terminal is vibrating and emitting smoke. I think it is time for it to FEED.
6) Now if the user had some experience using applications on a computer but no network experience, would any of your answers to the above change?
No, but I would answer them from Sweden.
Optional background question

7) What 3 computers do you use the most, and what do you use them for?

This is difficult to tell, since once I have finished driving in nails with them, the nameplate is generally illegible.

What's my score? Do I win?