[Sigia-l] Don't Make me Learn

[Ziya Oz]

I posted a splendid example of a junk science/blatant counter-marketing
effort to broadly label the virtual iPhone virtual keyboard as being
inferior to physical keypads, by User Centric whose clients include, gasp,
Motorola and Verizon. I don't mean to rehash the failings of the 'usability
test' here, but the net result of the FUD campaign was the predictably
reductionist headlines all over the web like these:

iPhone Touch Keyboard Lags Behind QWERTY
iPhone Keyboard Much Slower than QWERTY
iPhone keypad less efficient than physical QWERTY keypads
Etc.

My goal is to collect examples of technologies (HW/SW) that at first seem
complicated, almost impossible for the novice until, of course, literally
hundreds of millions of people do in fact learn to use and then forget what
the initial fuss was all about. I'm not minimizing the initial climb, but
simply exploring the fact that this happens *all the time*. Here are just a
few:

Typing
Mouse
Trackpad
IBM nipple
Trackball
Stylus

Double clicking
Drag and drop
Menus
Multi-touch
Multiple windows
Online telephony
Digital media players

Automobiles
Bicycles
Most musical instruments



What else can you think of?

----
Ziya

In design, interaction is the last resort.