Lisa "Finder" Info - 3b of 7

From: David Craig <dcraig_at_email.domain.hidden>
Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2001 17:46:38 -0700


> LISA "FINDER" INFO
>
> PART 3b OF 7
>
> Signal: Where did your ideas for the iconic desktop come from?
>
> Smith: It stemmed from a number of different places. From some of the work
> done at Xerox on the Alto computer. There were some IBM research papers,
> believe it or not, that discussed some office models that were iconic
> based
> that we looked at. And somewhat after we had worked on this, the Xerox
> Star
> computer had come out, so we compared it to our model. There was also some
> work done at MIT that had some influence on us. We got together and kicked
> around a lot of ideas, and tried to keep it consistent with our user
> interface philosophy. After a short period of time, we put together a
> prototype that stayed pretty close to the final product.
>
> Signal: Was the big breakthrough essentially just realizing how to use
> icons
> inside of windows to represent files? Were you already using windows and
> pull down menus?
>
> Smith: The initial design already had windows and pull down menus,
> although
> even those had some history. But the actual desktop's primary function was
> a
> filing function, an organizational function. The iconic model was really
> the
> late development.
>
> Signal: So various ideas would come, they'd be implemented and tried, and
> then approved by peer groups, as opposed to steadily working toward some
> predefined specification?
>
> Smith: That's not quite true, although the desktop was the exception to
> the
> rule. All of the major software products were designed by a group
> responsible for that component, and were pretty much spec'd out completely
> before any implementation was done, although there would be little
> mock-ups
> to check out some of the ideas. We tried to do the same thing with the
> desktop, but it's one of those products everybody is forced to use, and
> everybody has an idea on how it should be, so there was a lot of feedback
> about that particular component. It took a fair amount of iterating to
> come
> up with something that appeared to be not only satisfying to the groups
> working there, but also something that went over fairly well in our user
> testing, which we did quite a bit of. We tested mainly on people who had
> very little computer experience. We tried initially to make it mainly
> those
> who were in Apple, who had very limited experience, maybe new hires or
> people whose job didn't involve working directly with a computer. Further
> on
> into the project, we actually hired some people for testing purposes and
> we
> had a set of people in-house whose primary job was to gather testing
> feedback. We even set up a couple of testing rooms, and carefully recorded
> everything that happened, and tried to draw whatever conclusions we could.
> It took a fair amount of that to get us headed in the right direction.
>
> Signal: What are some examples of things considered for the desktop, but
> that ended up being changed or left out?
>
> Smith: The initial version had icons which were three dimensional and much
> more cartoon-like and somewhat entertaining. In fact, the initial trashcan
> was this beat up old trashcan you'd expect to see in an alley, with the
> lid
> half open and flies buzzing around it. We had actually talked about
> putting
> in some sound effects for when somebody put something into the trashcan.
> That met with some resistance from some of the stodgier people on the
> team,
> so that was dropped. One thing in particular we had a heated debate about
> was the notion of whether a document had to be saved or not. A number of
> people on the project wanted the system to be as far removed from typical
> computer interactions, and be as concrete as possible. The argument was
> that
> when you write something down on paper, it's always there. You don't have
> to
> say "save" to prevent it from mysteriously disappearing, as opposed to a
> typical computer model where people think "I know I have something in the
> computer's memory, and it's temporary, and I have to make sure I get that
> information from memory onto the disk otherwise I'm going to lose it". So
> there was quite a heated debate on that one, and unfortunately we tended
> to
> battle more toward the computer model, for a couple of different reasons.
> One reason was familiarity, the idea that users who had computer
> experience
> were more used to saves. There were some technical considerations too,
> having to do with how much information we had to keep around all the time
> when somebody stopped working on a particular document. Another desktop
> feature was the problem you always have anytime you go to a filing system
> with folders buried in folders. This was something Frank Ludolph was very
> concerned about. How do I find my documents, how do I find my folder? With
> folders nested in folders, and having to double click and open them and
> search around, it became quite tedious to find something if you had
> misplaced it. Rightly so, he thought we were duplicating some of the
> frustrations a person would find in a normal office, having to manually
> dig
> through their filing cabinet to find something. A computer should be able
> to
> take care of that job for them, essentially doing an electronic search of
> the filing cabinet. That was a feature we wanted to implement on the Lisa,
> but didn't quite have time to do.
>
> END OF PART 3
>
> Regards,
> David T. Craig
>
> ###########################################################
> # David T. Craig -- CyberWolf Inc. -- ACI 4D Developer #5
> # Aspen Plaza, 1596 Pacheco, Suite 203
> # Santa Fe, NM 87505 USA
> # voice 505.983.6463 ext 15 -- fax 505.988.2580
> # dcraig_at_email.domain.hidden
> ###########################################################
>
>
>
> Regards,
> David T. Craig
>
> ###########################################################
> # David T. Craig -- CyberWolf Inc. -- ACI 4D Developer #5
> # Aspen Plaza, 1596 Pacheco, Suite 203
> # Santa Fe, NM 87505 USA
> # voice 505.983.6463 ext 15 -- fax 505.988.2580
> # dcraig_at_email.domain.hidden
> ###########################################################

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