On 17 Apr 2002, at 8:36, Matthew Hindson wrote: > I would agree in general with this, although personally I would say that > Sibelius is considerably more intuitive at the early stages, less so as you > go along and want to do 'harder' stuff (which may be graphically based, as > you point out).
One of the things every computer programmer or user interface designer has to reconcile is that "ease of learning" and "ease of use" are often in conflict with each other. An interface that holds your hand and makes decisions for your is likely to speed learning, and allow you to accomplish tasks quickly without any steep learning curve (as long as the tasks you want to accomplish are the ones the UI designer mapped out for you). But often, the hand-holding interface then gets in the way once you *know* what you want to do. A UI needs to be forgiving of different levels of knowledge and experience. It should provide assistance to the newbie, but that assistance shouldn't get in the way of the experienced user. Also, one needs to design the UI on the ease of learning/ease of use continuum based on how often a user will need the function. Infrequently- used features benefit everyone, novice and adept, because if you only do it once every six months, you're always a novice at it! But frequently- used features probably benefit from non-intrusive user interfaces. Those may then be opaque to the novice, but once learned, can be extremely quick. For some ruminations on user interface design that came from setting my clocks back last October, you may find this Usenet post interesting: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=914BBAD08dfentonbwaynet%40news- server.nyc.rr.com (all on one line) -- David W. Fenton | http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates | http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
