The problem with (and yet, advantage of) software is its near-infinite plasticity. In the physical world, a device such as a bicycle attains design maturity (in terms of both form and features) fairly quickly and remains largely unchanged thereafter. [If anything, designers try to simplify its form even further.] Different sorts of vehicles with 3, 4, or more wheels are created to meet specific needs given that physical designs are not quite so plastic. Of course, from time-to-time, designers try to develop 'hybrid, multi-purpose vehicles' that try to interpolate between multiple vehicular forms to meet a broader spectrum of needs. Design evolution and integration in software is achieved far more rapidly -- and with greater ease, from a developer's standpoint. Humans, on the other hand, have not yet evolved to easily deal with (cognitively, emotionally as well as physically) with such immense shape-shifting plasticity in the physical world (which is why shape-shifting beings are met with fear and anxiety).
So there is a wide gap between what is achievable through technology and what humans can comfortably work with. Alexander mentioned the problem of organizing 500+ commands. The answer is, you don't organize it. Not in the conventional way, anyway. Anybody who had downloaded Mosaic back in 1992-93 and surfed over to Yahoo would have found (at one point) an organized list of about 50 websites -- that's all there was at that time. Yahoo continued with that model -- creating organized lists -- and then added a search feature when the web exploded beyond the point where organized lists of any kind become virtually impossible. Remember the time when there were these things called 'Web Portals' that were supposed to simplify your surfing experience? Where the heck did those go? When Google entered there scene, there were already a gazillion websites. Organization wasn't even an option. The solution was to provide the best kind of search facility possible so that you could find (in theory, anyway), exactly what you were looking for even if you didn't know the precise terms to use. While we are still not at the point where clicking on 'I'm feeling lucky' will take you to exactly where you want to go, the Google model has worked very well. Used to be that one had to grab domain names that matched your corporate name precisely. Now, all you need to do is to type in words that relate somehow to the corporation and, more often than not, the right link is there right on the first page of results. So, I think search-based feature access might be the way to deal with a huge feature list. The day I first accessd Google, I fell in love with it and left Yahoo search forever. It's true that I rarely use advanced search, but I rarely need it, anyway. Word processor designers can learn a lot from Google. Murli ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
