Give Us a Gas Pedal and Steering Wheel

The second step toward doing more by doing less is to raise the level of controls we use to interact with our systems, from their current, low, machine level to the higher human level where we operate.

Since computing began, designers and users have been catering to what machines want. Engineers design to suit what the computer, communications system, or peripheral needs. They then throw all the components at the users and expect them to make everything function together. Miraculously, we accept without protest!

As you sit in front of your computer trying to bend it to your wishes, I imagine you trying to control a very early vintage car. Instead of having a steering wheel, brake, and gas pedal, you must wear a ring on each finger. Each ring is connected with pulling cables to levers that control spark advance, fuel mixture, the valve clearance of each cylinder, the angle of each wheel, the tension on each brake drum. What you want to do, at the human level, is go from Boston to New York. But to get there you must operate at the machine level, wriggling all the wires and levers. The prospect is so harrowing you would not be willing to undertake the trip. Yet we do it every day when we fire up the computer. We need to replace the low-level controls with the equivalents of the steering wheel, gas pedal, and brake.

Finally, computers will be easier to use and make us more productive if we can stick to a few common and consistent commands to do what we want with information, regardless of where the information resides. It’s inconceivable to me that we are still using different commands between operating systems and browsers, just because operating systems work on information that is local to our personal computers while browsers work on distant information that sits on the Web. In both cases we want to do exactly the same things: enter information, see it or hear it, move it around, transform it, use it as a program to accomplish a task, and so on. Human-centric computing requires that we have the same set of commands for both of these cases, as well as for other gadgets and auxiliary systems that, inevitably, do the same things with information. This situation is as ridiculous as using your steering wheel to turn your car on city streets, but having to use the brake pedal to turn the car out in the country. Today’s systems not only force us to learn different commands, but also entirely different ways of working each time a system changes or is “upgraded.”

Many people confuse wishes with claims. Computer vendors have abused the phrases “ease of use” and “user-friendly.” What they usually mean is that you can change a few colors or icons on the screen, which is supposed to give the impression that the system is bending to your commands. Such feeble cosmetics are tantamount to painting a small trash can in pretty colors to chase away the bad smell. You would be better off if all the multicolor, multimedia bells and whistles were replaced by a thin, noisy pipe, through which you could speak with a wise old man at the other end. Unfortunately, we do not know how to make machines behave intelligently, except in extremely limited contexts. Nor can we create “intelligent agents” – another darling of the spin doctors – that can act in our stead, behaving the way people expect an intelligent surrogate to act. When I say we must improve ease of use and increase productivity, I mean improve the fundamental communication between people and machines, not wax commercial about unrealistic desires.

We have complicated things enough. It’s time we change our machine-oriented mind-set and invent controls that are much closer to what people want to do. We need the steering whee, gas pedal, and brake of the Information Age. New technology can help us in this quest.



Excerpt from "The Unfinished Revolution" by Michael L. Dertouzos