User:Natasa Siencnik/notes/bardini/

Abstract

Thierry Bardini: Inventing the Virtual User. In: Bootstrapping. Stanford University Press, 2000.

1. Introduction
   • computer interface design is an ad hoc discipline (Brenda Laurel)
   • many people today equate the interface with the screen
   • but several models of the interface emerged through time
2. Problem of the Interface
   • Brenda Laurel > Computers as Theater
   • simplistic model of interface as rectangle between user and computer
   • person's mental model of computer and computer's understanding of person
   • conceptual interface > user and computer need understanding of each other
   • simpler concept of interface > how humans and computers interact
3. Interface as representational space
   • agents in the interface cannot be separated from the plot
   • human-computer interface entails narratives of interaction
   • user and designer agree on the "truth" of the representation
   • consequently the representation (illusion) appears "real"
   • designing this illusion is designing the user interface
   • moving a document on the desktop of a personal computer
   • similar to but different from moving the "real" document on a "real desktop
4. Virtual Witnessing
   • invention of the user as a virtuality via virtual witnessing
   • imagined users anticipate the potential use of the design
5. Reflexive user
   • designer's representation of user is a distorted representation of the designer himself
   • designers often think of themselves as typical users
   • virtual user is progressively shaped and transformed via virtual witnessing
6. Inventing the Virtual User
   • Dougles Engelbart > framework for the augmentation of human intellect
   • user described in his own idealized image: "knowledge worker"
7. Bootstrap Group
   • who would be the most likely computer user if not a computer programmer?
   • experimental reasons describe programmers as ideal intelligence workers
   • they are autonomous and creative
   • fundamental reasons deal with the benefits of using programmers as the template
8. Black-Boxing the User
   • in sociology of technology, the projection of a representation of the user via testing has sometimes been called "black-boxing the user"
   • potential differences between what the designer envisioned the virtual user to be and what the real user actually becomes
   • testing as central moment in process of technology development
9. Prospective testing
   • testing if the design is feasible, whether the technology works as specified in the design, whether different components can be integrated
   • 1967 mouse was compared with alternative devices already on the market
   • several pointing devices were tested (mouse, light pen, tablet, joystick)
   • results seemed "disappointingly nonspecific", but the usage system seemed too broad
   • defined virtual user of someone who did not need to learn how to employ the technology
   • from the start, user of the personal computer was imagined in terms of an existing incorporating practice
   • alternative device > knee control that liberated both hands from selection operations
   • systematic attempts to imagine ways to use the possibilities for instrumentation by human body
10. Mouse in a Maze
    • marking interface > mouse and chord keyset
    • feedback loop on the screen, input device is determined by display system
    • Engelbart imagined an input and feedback loop that was purely tactile (gesture)
11. Augmented Knowledge Workshop
    • place in which knowledge workers do their work
    • coordinated set of user interfaces principles
    • specific vocabulary and commands, but consistent language and control structure
    • front ends should be universal things to serve multiple applications for the user
12. ARC's oN-Line System (NLS)
    • NLS was designed as a collection of applications (then called "subsystems")
    • certain kinds of commands did certain kinds of things no matter where you were
    • vision has been realized in many forms (graphical user interface, architecture)
    • problem was that it relied on practices of only reflexive virtual users
13. Modes of Systems
    • mode is a particular state of a system
    • early text-editing systems had at least two modes: input mode and editing mode
    • input mode > hitting the "d" key would input a "d"
    • editing mode > hitting the "d" key would send the delete command
    • user had to memorize where he or she was in the hierarchy of commands and modes
    • reflexive users accepted the premise of the modal interface
14. Conclusion
    • transformation of humans and machines
    • design of interface combining chord keyset and mouse lead to increase in speed
    • this goal drove the whole concept of the interface
    • modal nature of NLS for Engelbart wasn't a problem, but one of its features