Comments on: pushing the marketing envelope http://www.chaosprg.com/blog/2009/01/pushing-the-marketing-envelope/ Without creativity, the universe would just be columns of numbers. Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:51:58 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: irv http://www.chaosprg.com/blog/2009/01/pushing-the-marketing-envelope/comment-page-1/#comment-4 irv Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:17:57 +0000 http://www.chaosprg.com/blog/?p=24#comment-4 Once people started using that intentionally goofy key layout, how easy was it to get them to change? There have been allegedly better keyboard layouts for decades but do people use them? In the referenced article, there's one point where the author says that GUI experts assured him that the new way was much better and easier for the users and he believed them. Therefore, <em>he discounted the opinion of an actual user.</em> Maybe they need to take a lesson from the typewriter keyboard and let users do things the supposedly harder way. Or maybe that was just a straw man, to make people feel stupid about not changing when commanded to do so. Once people started using that intentionally goofy key layout, how easy was it to get them to change? There have been allegedly better keyboard layouts for decades but do people use them?

In the referenced article, there’s one point where the author says that GUI experts assured him that the new way was much better and easier for the users and he believed them. Therefore, he discounted the opinion of an actual user.

Maybe they need to take a lesson from the typewriter keyboard and let users do things the supposedly harder way. Or maybe that was just a straw man, to make people feel stupid about not changing when commanded to do so.

]]> By: Venkat http://www.chaosprg.com/blog/2009/01/pushing-the-marketing-envelope/comment-page-1/#comment-3 Venkat Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:28:19 +0000 http://www.chaosprg.com/blog/?p=24#comment-3 The QWERTY keyboard was designed to be hard to use, so people would type slow and not jam the early mechanical designs :) Also, I believe the ability to type TYPEWRITER using just the top row of QWERTY was done deliberately so sales people could easily type that out in demos. Possibly apocryphal story. The QWERTY keyboard was designed to be hard to use, so people would type slow and not jam the early mechanical designs :)

Also, I believe the ability to type TYPEWRITER using just the top row of QWERTY was done deliberately so sales people could easily type that out in demos. Possibly apocryphal story.

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