Designing considerate systems (abstract only)
Ronald E. Anderson · ACM SIGSOC Bulletin · 1981
Ease of Use can be thought of as consisting of two components: Ease of Learning and Ease of Doing. In the past, most of the attention in discussions of Ease of Use has focused on Ease of Learning. This is the motivation behind consideration for the "naive" or "casual" user. The most common approach has been to allow trading computing functionality for Ease of Learning. This makes the most commonly performed tasks very simple to perform, but prevents a wide range of other tasks from being performed at all. This affects Ease of Doing.Ease of Doing is a concept that has been primarily associated with expert users of computing systems. A task is only Easy to Do on a computer if the proper tools have been provided for doing it. Since there is an enormous range of tasks to apply systems to, there must also be a large collection of tools. A great variety of software tools that are finely tuned to particular applications should be made available to users. In addition, the system should be extensible to allow for ready customization.We feel that a sophisticated personal computing environment must provide a quick path for casual users to be able to operate parts of the system, and yet allow more habitual users a path to gain mastery over the more esoteric components of the system with time.