hopper, 1993 [4.2, abstract, overview, toc, switchboard, references]

4.2.4 Adaptability and Usability

The importance of consistency appeared to be literally central in relationship to other concerns in the technical context of all projects. It was arrived at for a variety of reasons and resulted in a variety of benefits.
 
Consistency was a global characteristic of courseware that contributed to the achievement of usability, although it was sometimes arrived at for pragmatic concerns for adaptability. ESCAPE developer's discovered "usability" benefits in the process of gaining adaptability. These gains included an improved user interface through the higher consistency required. The underlying cause of the relationship between usability and adaptability was explained in a conversation between Tillotson and Hopper (personal interview, June 23, 1992), where they describe that by seeking portability and the ensuing process of dealing with the need for consistency in the data, a much more powerful, and usable interface was produced.
 
Hopper: Is it your intuition that some of the things we've discovered for good programming purposes are good for user interfaces as well.
 
Tillotson: Consistency is perhaps the most important issue in a system such as this. A clean system design not only helps the developer, but it also helps the user to work with it more efficiently.
 
Hopper: So the flexibility allowed by HyperCard may not be as beautiful in a lot of ways. The freedom it allowed didn't create better materials.
 
Tillotson: Freedom is only good in hands of someone who knows how to use it. It is also freedom for someone who doesn't know what they are doing to hang themselves. (Tillotson & Hopper, 1992 )
© Mary E. Hopper | MEHopper@TheWorld.com [posted 12/04/93 | revised 04/12/13]