What Do Users Want?

This article is not about the secret desire of users to retire early (killed off in the 2001 dot.com implosion), or about how all of us long for a perfect office family of a wise boss and loving colleagues (isn’t that your office?).

But it is about something that all of us have to deal with nearly every single day:  the interface on your desktop computer and on the other computing devices you choose to use.

Most of my writing about this has been about the tattered edges of the current windows/menu/mouse interface which has been around for nearly 20 years (although most people have used it for only about ten years).  I keep pushing for a next generation interface, which is more intuitive, and less limited, possibly one that includes voice and natural language processing (NLP).  It would allow me to simply ask for things to appear or occur and the computer would make them happen.  Hah!

In The Meantime, Let’s Improve On What We Have

But while I – and others – try to speculate about the future, there are others who keep trying to improve on what we’ve got.

For example, each of the vendors of speech processing software for PC’s (ScanSoft’s, formerly Dragon Systems, Naturally Speaking, and IBM’s Via Voice, for instance) can offer software that permits you to control the computer with voice commands.  It may not work perfectly, but it is hands-free.

Recently, I’ve been conducting an extended experiment with a scripting language style interface called ActiveWords, www.activewords.com/.  This product lets you create little scripts (combinations of keystrokes), name them, and then call out activities by the names you’ve selected.  Names can be stored in a little always available menu, in case you’re not good at remembering what you call things (I’m not). 

It can be used for trivial things (take me to my own web site) or for complicated ones (close this program and open this other one and go to this website and get the latest price of company xxx’s stock and put it in here). 

You may think of such scripts as macros.  Many programs include them for use inside the program itself.  There are a few products, like ActiveWords, which attempt to work across the whole environment.  ActiveWords assumes you’re a Windows user working in the Microsoft Office environment.  That’s a pretty good assumption, since it covers the vast majority of desktop users.

Whether you would find such a program useful really depends on two things:

1. Are you willing to learn how to write the scripts?  (It isn’t hard but it is a bit tedious and if you do lots of things on your computer you will probably want lots of them.)
   
   

2. Do you like the idea of remembering commands as a tradeoff for being more productive?  If you’re someone who knows a lot of the Word or Excel commands and uses them, you’re a good candidate.

I’ve been corresponding with both the inventor of ActiveWords, an attorney named Buzz Bruggeman, and some of his enthusiastic users.  I’m curious as to what you, the Opinions readers think.  So I invite you to write me and tell me:

1. Would you consider using a product like this?
   
   

2. Do you like using command-style interfaces?
   
   

3. Would you consider a product like this for others in your company?  If yes:  What kind of company do you have.  If not, why not.

We’ll publish the results, suitably aggregated and analyzed.  (ActiveWords isn’t my client and Buzz doesn’t even know I’m doing this – I’m just curious.)

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