Todd asked: : Just out of curiosity, what was some of the first software you worked : on 20 years (or close to 20 years) ago?
I was working on electronic point of sale (POS) systems using microprocessors. I remember doing things like hand-assembling Z80 microprocessor code, keying it in on the live customer's computer to put a fix through their entire database. The interaction design was really, really important (although it was years before I called it that). There was the human-computer interaction and also the human-human interaction (sales person and customer) to take into consideration. Mostly, the sales person had to be able to use the POS system while still talking to the customer, wrapping the stuff, collecting the money and so on. So you really couldn't rely on them seeing anything on the screen. We had an unused key on one system's installed keyboard, and more than one sales person asked for a 'customer destruct' button. An example of why you don't always do what users want :-) Which sort of brings me to the coolest thing that I worked on. It was a stock-taking system for a leading chain of department stores. It used bespoke hand-held computers that uploaded data to bespoke microcomputers. The cool parts were (a) performance: cut the sorting time from several minutes to seconds and (b) we shipped it defect-free. No reported software or hardware defects during the entire several-year lifetime of the system - and they did really install it and use it in several stores. We achieved an easy-to-use interface on the hand-held devices despite the numeric-only keypad. Cheers Caroline Jarrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01525 370379 Effortmark Ltd Usability - Forms - Content ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
