Transcript Web and Aging — How the Web may evolve to a usable technical

Web and Aging
— How the Web may evolve to a usable technical
artifact as others which we are familiar with —
Hans-Jürgen Hoffmann
Darmstadt University of
Technology
Dept. of Computer Science
June 2003
HCI Intl., Crete
• Digression to history
- Automobile
- Telephone
- ATM banking
• Web in history
- 1995 minus
- 2003
- 2011 plus
• Some examples of stupid designs
• Less is more
• Be positive
• And an epilogue (if you like)
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Remarks
from a retired professor
in Computer Science
Take it easy !
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Digression to history — the automobile —
• Take Volkswagen as an example
• Ferdinand Porsche, designing engineer, 1934
• High time in the fifties/sixties,
millions in use
• Do you remember:
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poor heating
fixed seats
manual choke
frequent checking of oil level
fuel reserve switch at the floor board
manual switching for direction change, no automatic reset
• Production just stopped in 2003
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Digression to history — the telephone —
• Philipp Reis, inventor, 1861
Alexander Graham Bell, inventor and designing engineer,
1876
Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, 1876
• Long-distance calling, in the fifties
• Replacement of analogue signalling
by digital signalling, ~1990
• Internet telephonie, ~2000
• Do you remember:
- ringing by pulse wheel
- operator switching
- ground key
• Largest “computerized” network
• Easy to use, just lift handset and dial
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Digression to history — ATM banking —
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Who invented it? Luther George Simjian, 1939
Usable design by Don Wetzel, about 1970
Touch screen, multi-lingual
Full service approaching
Security features
.
.
Now nearly everywhere,
networked, worldwide
• Home banking,
internet banking
• Standardisation missing
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Web in history — 1995 minus —
• Hypertext, first approaches beginning 1945
• U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),
1973 - basics of Internet technology
• Tim Berners-Lee (now Director of the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C),
inventor and designing engineer of WWW;
prototyping begins about 1990, demonstrations 1991 running
• Browser development; propagation in science institutes and
universities
• Study Georgia University 1994
http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys/survey-01-1994/graphs/results-general.html
=> 2 % of users elder than 50 years
• First usability studies and design guidelines in literature
(seldom followed)
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Web in history — 2003 —
• Web is “omnipresent”,
like automobile, telephone, ATM
• Electronic business (B2B), electronic commerce (B2C)
• Not much advance in usability (although much
articles in literature)
• Elder people on the Web
- passive (like TV)
- semi-active (surfing for what they are interested in)
- active (e.g., contributing in discussing communities)
• However, (still) low consideration during design for
what elder people wish or need, resp.
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Web in history — 2011 plus —
• Technical restrictions decreasing (e.g., broadband
access) and access cheaper
• Commercialisation
• Some advance in usability (e.g., “Less is more”movement)
• Web even more omnipresent, “mobile” Web:
E-Government, E-Learning, E-anything, Virtual
travelling, M-Commerce
• W3C starts to work on usability guidelines for Web
usage by elder (and impaired) users
• Elder people should actively influence Web design
and usage — thanks for organising this workshop —
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Some examples of stupid designs
• Not all (especially elder people) use most recently
introduced technologies; incompatibilities
• Not much emphasis on content
• Complex, bad arrangements
• Small font, line thickness, button size, jargon
• Flashing etc.
• Who will continue this list ?
• Similar complaints by other serious Web users !
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Less is more (i)
Friedrich Schiller, 1795 - 1805:
Einfachheit ist das Resultat der Reife
(Simplicity is the result of maturity)
Bill Raduchel, ~1999 ( Chief Strategy Officer, Sun Microsystems )
The challenge over the next 20 years will not be speed or
cost or performance; it will be a question of complexity
Jan Baan, ~1999
Our enemy is complexity, and it’s our goal to kill it
Dave Moss, 2001
Keep it simple
( in recognition of Visual Studio.Net,
Microsoft Developer Network Journal, issue 27 )
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Less is more (ii)
Stickers distributed by an American company, 2000, 2003, ...
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Less is more (iii)
There are posters distributed by IBM at CHI 2003
also following the Less is more-movement
(sorry, the posters are so big that I can’t scan them in)
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Be positive !
However, don’t stop to identify
stupid designs !
Say it !
Avoid to visit/use them !
Stupid designs are stupid for all users,
not only for the elder people !
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Epilogue
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That is what we missed !
.
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And that is what will come !
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Contact
Prof. em. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Hoffmann
Darmstadt University of Technology
Darmstadt, Germany
[email protected]
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