The Case for the Radically Simple Interface and Intelligent Information System
The User Interface
2.1 The user interface (the hardware that enables a human to interact with an information system) most common for contemporary information systems is the television or telephone but the favoured interface for unmediated information creation, processing, transmission and reception is the PC mediated by a keyboard and mouse. Both of these devices require a high degree of manual dexterity and the qwerty keyboard has two added disadvantages: first, it is associated with professionalism (professionalist) and is therefore automatically alienating to those who are or consider themselves to be unskilled; secondly, it is ergonomically inappropriate, assigning, for example, the letter a to the weakest finger on the weaker hand of most people. On these grounds alone, the qwerty/mouse interface faces substantial problems in becoming a universal standard. The growth of text production through SMS is an illuminating parallel phenomenon as its use is widespread amongst individuals and groups who have not readily turned to a standard qwerty/mouse interface.
2.2 For all their minor irritating complexities and inconsistencies of design, remote controllers, built round the numeric keypad, have proved to be popular in the mass market. This is not, incidentally, because the telephone numeric keypad is ingrained in our cultures, it is actually relatively new; but the skills which lie behind its use are associated with:
- Repeating given processes (dialling a number) and
- Choosing from limited options (press 1 for today, 2 for tomorrow, 3 for the next seven days),
as opposed to undertaking an act of creation (typing an email address, choosing a subject line, creating a statement). The numeric keypad also accords almost entirely with a basic rule of metadata to which I now turn.