Re: diversity in web UI design

At 02:24 PM 11/1/00 -0500, Al Gilman wrote:
>To get the content-sourcing community to understand the model, and to be 
>able to map their message into this framework, you pretty much have to 
>confront them with the
>divegent demands of different interface situations, and challenge them to 
>do the compare-and-contrast across what they would present as customer 
>interfaces in each.

When I was working on a touch tablet screen access system I took the advice 
I now blithely give: "unplug the monitor". The experience of doing this for 
a reasonably extended period changed everything.

I often watch blind guys do computer stuff using synthesizers, most 
recently listening to Gregory doing his thing for several hours. I try to 
get the "content-sourching community" to actually use these systems rather 
than just trying to imagine what it's like. They don't do it. They think 
they can "understand the model" but it must be experienced, not envisioned. 
Essentially it's serial access in whatever guise. It's not as bad as 
"reading through a straw" but it's more like that than we'd care to admit.

When I (blithely? dismissively?) considered the proposed schemes (to have 
several docs instead of trying to have several views of one semantic 
underpinning) to be pie-in-sky I wasn't referring to their feasibililty but 
only to their "vaporness". The "concrete example" of a non-conformant bank 
display vs. a functioning automated telephone "help" system didn't change 
the issue.

Al's "With the best accessible site design and the best assistive 
technology, you can make information retrieval eyes-free almost as usable 
as a voice portal designed for use in audio from the ground up" is what I'm 
claiming to be the case only I'd leave out the "almost" because to me 
usability is inescapably linked to speed and any 
"best...design...technology" will win the race hands down. Telephone menu 
systems are and will for the forseeable future be absurdly slow and stupid.

As to the quote from Raman, here's one from his position paper for the Hong 
Kong Device Independent Workshop:

  Single authoring for a multiplicity of interfaces and deployment 
environments necessarily involves addressing of issues of presentation 
specific to each channel e.g., designing the look and feel for the visual 
presentation, the sound and feel for the auditory representation. We 
believe that a single authoring framework should allow these concerns to be 
cleanly separated so that:

         Content can be created and maintained without presentation concerns.

         Presentation rules --including content transformations and style 
sheets can be maintained for specific channels and deployment environments 
without adversely   affecting other aspects of the system.

         Content and style can be independently maintained and revised.

His paper at http://www.w3.org/2000/09/Papers/IBM.html is worth reading in 
context of this discussion as are many of the presentations at this and the 
Bristol events. Although there was considerable concern that the "single 
source" vision might be clouded, the idea that there can be an underlying 
content/semantics with subsequent realizations via style/structure 
manipulations is still IMO the prevalent view. There can be many views of 
reality but we pretty much assume that despite "Rashomon" interpretations, 
there is only one reality. Heisenberg/Godel to the contrary 
notwithstanding, we pretty much agree that the train schedule is the train 
schedule and the bank balance the bank balance.

To summarize all this multivergent stuff: the ideal of having one 
semantically "complete" source object from which may be derived almost any 
number of versions is still alive and well.

--
Love.
                 ACCESSIBILITY IS RIGHT - NOT PRIVILEGE

Received on Wednesday, 1 November 2000 14:59:55 UTC