Unless it is enjoyable or educational in and of itself, interaction is an essentially negative aspect of information software.

newspaper editor needs to see what a page looks like—close-up, from a distance, and in relation to other pages—and how it would look in a variety of other configurations. She wants to see misspelled words, lines that are poorly justified or hyphenated, and widows and orphans. She wants to see columns that are short or overlong, and how they can be... See more

Many current designs center around manipulating a database of “appointments,” but is this really what a calendar is for?

Information software, by contrast, mimics the experience of

reading

, not working. It is used for achieving an understanding—constructing a model within the mind. Thus, the user must

listen

to the software and

think

about what it says... but any manipulation happens mentally

Although manipulation is the focus, good manipulation software must provide superb visualization as well. This establishes the feedback loop that is critical for all creative activity—the manipulator must see the effects of her manipulation.

The main cause, I believe, is that many software designers feel they are designing a machine. Their foremost concern is behavior—what the software does . They start by asking: What functions must the software perform? What commands must it accept? What parameters can be adjusted? (In the case of websites: What pages must there be? How are they... See more

About 85 per cent of my “thinking” time was spent getting into a position to think, to make a decision, to learn something I needed to know. Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it.

Even more graphically challenging is manipulation of abstract objects, such as music or financial data, where the graphical representation must show not only what can be done with it, but

what it is

in the first place