She had one of those "not calculators" with a built-in printer.
Not sure what they are properly called.
Her "not calculator" was old, stained with cigarette smoke and coffee and
she did not wish for a new one.
I got paid a bit a few times to clean it up inside and out.
The thing was a tank.
(If it still exists, it should still work with a bit of care and attention.)
She used some form of financial software running on a terminal.
I think it was from an AS/400.
She was an expert on both.
Whatever key combinations were required to enter data on the terminal
had become so ingrained that if you asked her how to do it,
she would have to look at what her hands did. (weird).
The UX on the terminal was shit if you had to learn it.
(Since I got paid to do some data entry, I felt the pain).
But if you got used to it, it was damn fast.
No lag, no mouse pointing, and it stayed entirely consistent.
A bit like VI I guess.
As far as I know the system never crashed on her.
The server did need care, but it would order it on its own.
At some point they brought in Windows PCz and Lotus Symphony, I think.
She hated that.
She found it all slow, inconsistent and did not like the mouse one bit.
The other way around though.
When someone new was hired and we were in the age of Microsoft Windows,
new people were horrified by the old terminal software.
I still sometimes see people at warehouses or stores that use terminal driven
software and some of them are just as fast.
It is fun to see.
The majority though hunt, scratch head, peck, hit whatever undo is, and try again.
Should we make easy to use software or software as a tool for those who
go through the effort to learn?
I dont think any "windows/osx/linux/" screen UI accounting system would be as fast to use.
> Whatever key combinations were required to enter data on the terminal had become so ingrained that if you asked her how to do it, she would have to look at what her hands did. (weird).
As an Emacs user, I'm like that too. I don't know which keys I need to type to perform some operations, only the movement. I'm pretty sure a lot of Emacs users are like that too.
I'm the same way with vim. Funnily enough, even though I've been using vim for 15 years and rarely ever have to think about what keys to press, when I am on display (for example in a screen share or pair programming) I'll sometimes forget how to use vim and until I can get myself relaxed a bit I'll fumble around like I have no idea how to use a computer.
Counter-intuitively, making terminal software is harder because you have to think hard about the UX. You have to design how the accountant (or the user) is going to use, you have to make shortcuts, you have to think about the progression, etc... This is not the case for what's happening on GUI-land where the "designers" just randomly put texts, buttons, buttons that look like text, input boxes, tables, etc... It's all there just click a few buttons to get there.
GUI software for professional use takes the same amount of care to develop. I've been involved in data entry applications used for call center agents, cashiers and industrial control. A lot of care is taken about tab-order, keyboard shortcuts, proper use of F-keys, readability of everything, color-coding related functions and stability of known workflows. The advantage that GUI brings to the table is that a novice or one-time-user can make progress by just using the mouse as always. But e.g. with tooltips, a mirrored F-key toolbar (think Norton/Total/Midnight Commander), always on hotkey hints, learning a more efficient workflow is made possible.
One of the pieces of software I was most proud about was a data entry system for a P&C insurance company, the old policy subscription terminal-based system allowed for about 200 policies/hour by user, then they "upgraded" to a GUI that slowed them to about 20/hour and I built a desktop application that allowed them to go back to 200 policies/hour but with stuff like auto-filling, geolocation, error correction so the data quality was much higher.
I worked with the end users a lot to make sure the UI matched the workflow, iterated over several versions and it definitely paid off.
This makes intuitive sense, but isn't an idea I'd thought of before. Are there any resources you'd point to as an intro to terminal/CLI/etc UX (especially any that contrast against GUI instincts)?
> I dont think any "windows/osx/linux/" screen UI accounting system would be as fast to use
Doesn't make sense for such a general assertion, you can fully replicate the keybinds of any terminal system and make all the "screen UI" strictly additive to the keyboard experience
She had one of those "not calculators" with a built-in printer. Not sure what they are properly called.
Her "not calculator" was old, stained with cigarette smoke and coffee and she did not wish for a new one.
I got paid a bit a few times to clean it up inside and out. The thing was a tank. (If it still exists, it should still work with a bit of care and attention.)
She used some form of financial software running on a terminal. I think it was from an AS/400.
She was an expert on both.
Whatever key combinations were required to enter data on the terminal had become so ingrained that if you asked her how to do it, she would have to look at what her hands did. (weird).
The UX on the terminal was shit if you had to learn it. (Since I got paid to do some data entry, I felt the pain).
But if you got used to it, it was damn fast. No lag, no mouse pointing, and it stayed entirely consistent. A bit like VI I guess.
As far as I know the system never crashed on her. The server did need care, but it would order it on its own.
At some point they brought in Windows PCz and Lotus Symphony, I think. She hated that.
She found it all slow, inconsistent and did not like the mouse one bit.
The other way around though. When someone new was hired and we were in the age of Microsoft Windows, new people were horrified by the old terminal software.
I still sometimes see people at warehouses or stores that use terminal driven software and some of them are just as fast. It is fun to see.
The majority though hunt, scratch head, peck, hit whatever undo is, and try again.
Should we make easy to use software or software as a tool for those who go through the effort to learn?
I dont think any "windows/osx/linux/" screen UI accounting system would be as fast to use.