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Alison M. McGregor

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Publications by Alison M. McGregor (bibliography)

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1988
 
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Mayes, J. T., Draper, Steven, McGregor, Alison M. and Oatley, Keith (1988): Information Flow in a User Interface: The Effect of Experience and Context on the Recall of MacWrite Screens. In: Jones, Dylan M. and Winder, R. (eds.) Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the British Computer Society Human Computer Interaction Specialist Group - People and Computers IV August 5-9, 1988, University of Manchester, UK. pp. 275-289.

A major theoretical and practical concern in HCI is to discover and characterise what it is that users know -- of what their expertise consists. We have tested what users remember of the detailed content of the MacWrite interface. We found that even experienced users can recall little of the menu contents, even though during use those menus are the instruments of their successful performance. It seems that the necessary information is picked up, used, and discarded; it is not learned in the sense that commands are learned. More exactly, users retain only enough information for recognition, not the much greater amount required for recall. This has implications for predicting learning times (not having to learn commands even for skilled performance should make for fast skill acquisition), and for writing documentation (no need to teach what won't be learned): thus the 'information flow' view of human action (Norman&Draper [1986]) can be used to re-interpret the findings and recommendations of the 'minimal manual' approach developed by Jack Carroll and his associates (Carroll [1984a]; Carroll [1984b]).

© All rights reserved Mayes et al. and/or Cambridge University Press

 
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Jun 19

... there are no simple 'right' answers for most web design questions (at least not for the important ones). What works is good, integrated design that fills a need--carefully thought out, well executed, and tested.

-- Steve Krug, Don't Make Me Think, p. 136

 
 

Featured chapter

Read the fascinating history of Wearable Computing, told by its father, Steve Mann

Read Steve's chapter !

 
 

Latest books

The Social Design of Technical Systems: Building technologies for communities
by Brian Whitworth and Adnan Ahmad

 
Start reading

The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
by Mads Soegaard and Rikke Friis Dam

 
Start reading
 
 

Help us help you!