USABILITY AND CLIENT-SERVER COMPUTING

Is usability important? Consider this story, told to students of user interface design. A manufacturer of World War II aircraft designed the landing gear mechanism so that when the lever in the cockpit was down, the landing gear was up. As a result, there were many belly-landings and accidents until the mechanism was redesigned so that the lever action corresponded to the landing gear action. Kraig R. Meyer of Aerospace Corporation, who was once one of those user interface design students, commented on the Internet RISKS Forum: "There are certain things that humans naturally expect machines to do in response to a certain action, and neither training nor manuals are entirely successful at changing those expectations." This report continues our study of usability, begun last month.