Users Need New Applications, Interfaces, Metaphor's Liddle Says
 
Copyright (c) 1989, McGraw-Hill, Inc.
SAN JOSE, CA (Microbytes Daily News Service) --- Eighty percent
of the eligible employees of the Fortune 500 aren't yet using
personal computers, while many of the remaining 20 percent are on
their third PC, said David Liddle, chairman of Metaphor Computer
Systems, at 3Com's Network Systems Forum last week. And to get
that 80 percent using computers, vendors need to develop new
applications and new user interfaces, he said.
 
"The four most important PC applications are: spreadsheets, word
processing, spreadsheets, and word processing," Liddle said,
claiming that the average user runs only 1.6 to 1.8 applications
per PC. "The Mac is the only product to create a new class of
users" -- desktop publishers, he said.
 
Developers need to realize that there are 3 separate aspects of
user interface design, Liddle said: the information display, the
command invoker, and the "user conceptual model," such as the
desktop or the spreadsheet. Good interfaces and good applications
allow people to be more productive, Liddle said.
 
Users have three main application needs that are unfulfilled,
Liddle said: the ability to access data no matter where it is,
tools that can be used by all users, and tools for end users to
develop applications. While concepts such as Structured Query
Language and client-server computing have helped improve access
to data, users still have to become experts in their applications
and ping-pong between the abstractions of their job and the
abstractions of computing, he said.
 
                              --- Sharon Fisher
 
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