There is another side to usability: available means of input and output.
My area of interest is medical informatics, especially computer aided diagnostics.
To be useful and medical computer system needs a method of input that does not impede the Doctor/paramedic/nurse in any way, YET captures all pertinent information.
Practically this means voice input on a palmtop. "pocket-linux" runs on at least two current palmtops that I know (Acompli and Ipaq). However I know of no freesoftware app that can do speach-to-text, nor any that can do hand-writting-to-text.
Both of these are very important modes of input for palmtops and 3rd Generation cellphones.
Text-to-speach is important for blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic people. Does anyone know of a Free app to do this? Imagine being able to write and xhtml page and use it either in a website, or a Gnome Atchung! presentation with text to speach by using different XSL style sheets.
I don't expect GUIs on mouse-keyboard-screen interfaces to change much. The real potential for improving usability lies with new types of I/O hardware, and the apps to exploit them. The "holy grail" (and a long way off) is natural language interpretation and generation. For the time being, precise terminologies may allow this to be faked up for specialist apps like medical informatics.
Nick Hockings.
Just to troll....
Why do we /want/ newbies to be able to use gnome? The current generation of clueless (l)users are going to be dead a 20-30 years anyway, and it is our future generations that need to be catered for.
I started off on an old spectrum 48k (ah those were the days) where it was all CLI, where you could program your own games, and had to program your own assembler to write assembly :)
My concern is that we are dumbing it down, and making it _harder_ for users in the long run. I used DOS, then windows, etc, and had to fix all the problems myself etc But it made me learn how it worked, it forced me to think, and to understand. Having to work with the computer, not expecting the computer to work on my terms.
I already feel sorry this generation comming up, starting off on windows 98, with no source code to play with etc. How are they ever going to learn?
on the spectrum, a lot of games were written in basic, and were easy to follow and alter.
And now, with all this trouble of dumbing down the interface, you want to do that _more_ to gnome?? I say no! I say, make the users think dammit! Make the users read man pages, understand the OS a little. If they want something nice and simple, use KDE, or go use a mac.
I want a gnome that is useful for _me_. A professional coder, and linux user. Newbies add no real value, where as make it good for a new coder, and he might just help out with it.
If gnome was mainly for profit, then I'd see why you'd want the newbie users, but it's not, so stop trying to dumb down my interface!
</troll>
JohnFlux
John Peter Tapsell said:
Just to troll....
Why do we /want/ newbies to be able to use gnome? The current generation of clueless (l)users are going to be dead a 20-30
years
anyway, and it is our future generations that need to be catered for.
I started off on an old spectrum 48k (ah those were the days) where it
was all
CLI, where you could program your own games, and had to program your own assembler to write assembly :)
My concern is that we are dumbing it down, and making it _harder_ for
users in
the long run. I used DOS, then windows, etc, and had to fix all the problems myself etc But it made me learn how it worked, it forced me to think, and to
understand.
Having to work with the computer, not expecting the computer to work on my terms.
I already feel sorry this generation comming up, starting off on windows
98,
with no source code to play with etc. How are they ever going to learn?
on the spectrum, a lot of games were written in basic, and were easy to
follow
and alter.
And now, with all this trouble of dumbing down the interface, you want to
do
that _more_ to gnome?? I say no! I say, make the users think dammit!
Make
the users read man pages, understand the OS a little. If they want something nice and simple, use KDE, or go use a mac.
I want a gnome that is useful for _me_. A professional coder, and linux
user.
Newbies add no real value, where as make it good for a new coder, and he
might
just help out with it.
If gnome was mainly for profit, then I'd see why you'd want the newbie
users,
but it's not, so stop trying to dumb down my interface!
</troll>
I agree (almost) completely. We don't want to dumb it down to the point where one doesn't see what the os is doing (i.e. Windows). But we should make it easier to find help. HTML Help on every possible topic and nicely integrated in the OS, that's what I would like to see. Fine, let them read the man-pages, but what if they don't know what a man-page is? Beginner guides are always a plus anyway, but they're not always that easy to come by on Linux systems.
Maybe I'm overstating this, whatever,
Wim wdesmet@yucom.be
------ "We will bravely defend your freedom and never back down. Not even trolls can stop our swords. " - Bernhard Reiter
Wim De Smet wrote:
John Peter Tapsell said:
Just to troll....
Why do we /want/ newbies to be able to use gnome? The current generation of clueless (l)users are going to be dead a 20-30
years
anyway, and it is our future generations that need to be catered for.
I started off on an old spectrum 48k (ah those were the days) where it
was all
CLI, where you could program your own games, and had to program your own assembler to write assembly :)
My concern is that we are dumbing it down, and making it _harder_ for
users in
the long run. I used DOS, then windows, etc, and had to fix all the problems myself etc But it made me learn how it worked, it forced me to think, and to
understand.
Having to work with the computer, not expecting the computer to work on my terms.
I already feel sorry this generation comming up, starting off on windows
98,
with no source code to play with etc. How are they ever going to learn?
on the spectrum, a lot of games were written in basic, and were easy to
follow
and alter.
And now, with all this trouble of dumbing down the interface, you want to
do
that _more_ to gnome?? I say no! I say, make the users think dammit!
Make
the users read man pages, understand the OS a little. If they want something nice and simple, use KDE, or go use a mac.
I want a gnome that is useful for _me_. A professional coder, and linux
user.
Newbies add no real value, where as make it good for a new coder, and he
might
just help out with it.
If gnome was mainly for profit, then I'd see why you'd want the newbie
users,
but it's not, so stop trying to dumb down my interface!
</troll>
I agree (almost) completely. We don't want to dumb it down to the point where one doesn't see what the os is doing (i.e. Windows).
I couldn't disagree more. The user interface should be as independent from the OS structure as possible. The aim of a UI is to be usable. It should help users of any skill level perform the tasks they need to perform.
That doesn't mean "dumbing down". What it means is structuring menu items and so on in a manner that corresponds to what is intuitive, not to what OS structure is the most efficient. Anythign else misses the whole point of modularity.
In much the same way as the kernel should be optimised to be as fast and stable as possible, the UI should be optimised to be as usable as possible. All the same functions should still be there, but it does no harm to move the more complex ones to an "advanced" tab and to arrange things logically (like having one unified font selection menu rather than three seperate ones).
Alistair Davidson wrote:
Wim De Smet wrote:
John Peter Tapsell said:
Just to troll....
Why do we /want/ newbies to be able to use gnome? The current generation of clueless (l)users are going to be dead a
20-30
years
anyway, and it is our future generations that need to be catered for.
I started off on an old spectrum 48k (ah those were the days) where
it
was all
CLI, where you could program your own games, and had to program your
own
assembler to write assembly :)
My concern is that we are dumbing it down, and making it _harder_ for
users in
the long run. I used DOS, then windows, etc, and had to fix all the problems myself
etc
But it made me learn how it worked, it forced me to think, and to
understand.
Having to work with the computer, not expecting the computer to work
on my
terms.
I already feel sorry this generation comming up, starting off on
windows
98,
with no source code to play with etc. How are they ever going to
learn?
on the spectrum, a lot of games were written in basic, and were easy
to
follow
and alter.
And now, with all this trouble of dumbing down the interface, you want
to
do
that _more_ to gnome?? I say no! I say, make the users think dammit!
Make
the users read man pages, understand the OS a little. If they want something nice and simple, use KDE, or go use a mac.
I want a gnome that is useful for _me_. A professional coder, and
linux
user.
Newbies add no real value, where as make it good for a new coder, and
he
might
just help out with it.
If gnome was mainly for profit, then I'd see why you'd want the newbie
users,
but it's not, so stop trying to dumb down my interface!
</troll>
I agree (almost) completely. We don't want to dumb it down to the point where one doesn't see what the os is doing (i.e. Windows).
I couldn't disagree more. The user interface should be as independent from the OS structure as possible. The aim of a UI is to be usable. It should help users of any skill level perform the tasks they need to perform.
Yeah, probably, maybe I was being to extreme, see further.
That doesn't mean "dumbing down". What it means is structuring menu items and so on in a manner that corresponds to what is intuitive, not to what OS structure is the most efficient. Anythign else misses the whole point of modularity.
In much the same way as the kernel should be optimised to be as fast and stable as possible, the UI should be optimised to be as usable as possible. All the same functions should still be there, but it does no harm to move the more complex ones to an "advanced" tab and to arrange things logically (like having one unified font selection menu rather than three seperate ones).
These are actually some things I wouldn't mind seeing too. But I also think that it shouldn't influence the UI in a way that it loses transparancy and, in effect, power (or how would one describe that?). The reason I mention windows is that this is a perfect example of how the developers focus on one users group (the newbies, who they seem to consider the only user group) and in that effort create redundant systems that harm the os's efficiency and (again) transparancy. Transparancy is what I really like about linux. This is my fear in watching some of the suggestions in the sun gnome usability report.
-- Lord [INSERT NAME HERE] Rick's World: http://www.altgeek.org/lord_inh/comic/index.html
-- Wim wdesmet@yucom.be
Wim De Smet wrote:
Alistair Davidson wrote:
In much the same way as the kernel should be optimised to be as fast and stable as possible, the UI should be optimised to be as usable as possible. All the same functions should still be there, but it does no harm to move the more complex ones to an "advanced" tab and to arrange things logically (like having one unified font selection menu rather than three seperate ones).
These are actually some things I wouldn't mind seeing too. But I also think that it shouldn't influence the UI in a way that it loses transparancy and, in effect, power (or how would one describe that?). The reason I mention windows is that this is a perfect example of how the developers focus on one users group (the newbies, who they seem to consider the only user group) and in that effort create redundant systems that harm the os's efficiency and (again) transparancy. Transparancy is what I really like about linux. This is my fear in watching some of the suggestions in the sun gnome usability report.
Oh, I couldn't agree more, the idea of removing features or reducing power is just plain wrong. And certainly, I'd disagree with their suggestion of changing the Home dir's icon into a hard-drive or something. Though they did discover a problem, I think they suggested the wrong solution in that case.
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, you wrote:
Wim De Smet wrote:
John Peter Tapsell said:
Just to troll....
...
I agree (almost) completely. We don't want to dumb it down to the point where one doesn't see what the os is doing (i.e. Windows).
I couldn't disagree more. The user interface should be as independent from the OS structure as possible. The aim of a UI is to be usable. It should help users of any skill level perform the tasks they need to perform.
Bingo! I think we have hit on what I mean.
I feel the UI should _not_ be as independent from the OS structure as possible. I've taken UI classes etc, and heard these argument, but they are after maxing usability. We should be after raising the users awareness of how things work, and understanding it. I want the UI to be tied to the OS structure as much as possible. I don't want too much abstraction in the UI - this is what leads to clueless users.
That doesn't mean "dumbing down". What it means is structuring menu items and so on in a manner that corresponds to what is intuitive, not to what OS structure is the most efficient. Anythign else misses the whole point of modularity.
No, the user menu should not be abstracted! What if something goes wrong and the user has to fix it? Or they are just curious and want to switch to CLI, etc. They want some quite a strong correlation.
The definition in some ppl's books of a luser, is a user that does not _want_ to know more. A newbie is just someone who is clueless, but wants to learn.
You want to aim gnome at usable by a luser, i want to aim gnome at being usable by newbies. So what if the learning curve is steeper, if they are afraid of learning, then don't use gnome.
In much the same way as the kernel should be optimised to be as fast and stable as possible, the UI should be optimised to be as usable as possible. All the same functions should still be there, but it does no harm to move the more complex ones to an "advanced" tab and to arrange things logically (like having one unified font selection menu rather than three seperate ones).
I agree with this. However from your previous points you are suggesting reordering and shuffling all those tags so they no longer resemble any kind of structure the OS uses.
JohnFlux
Lord John Flux
Rick's World: http://www.altgeek.org/lord_inh/comic/index.html
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, John wrote:
Wim De Smet wrote:
John Peter Tapsell said:
Just to troll....
...
I agree (almost) completely. We don't want to dumb it down to the point where one doesn't see what the os is doing (i.e. Windows).
I couldn't disagree more. The user interface should be as independent from the OS structure as possible. The aim of a UI is to be usable. It should help users of any skill level perform the tasks they need to perform.
Bingo! I think we have hit on what I mean.
I feel the UI should _not_ be as independent from the OS structure as possible. I've taken UI classes etc, and heard these argument, but they are after maxing usability. We should be after raising the users awareness of how things work, and understanding it. I want the UI to be tied to the OS structure as much as possible. I don't want too much abstraction in the UI - this is what leads to clueless users.
No, that doesn't follow. A good UI will make it easy - by itself it will do no more, no less. Users will only remain ignorant of the workings if (a) they don't care about them, or (b) the workings have been obfuscated. Avoiding (b) is one of free software's main goals. But (a) is a personal choice that we shouldn't attempt to control. Computer science, quoth Dijkstra, is about computers in the way astronomy is about telescopes.
By all means aid the hackers in their study of the equipment we're all using; that's great, the knowledge there protects much freedom. Meanwhile everybody else in the world (literally everyone) has their own ideas about what's cool. Imagine what you could do if your integrated development environment was a starship holodeck...
You want to aim gnome at usable by a luser, i want to aim gnome at being usable by newbies. So what if the learning curve is steeper, if they are afraid of learning [about telescopes], then don't use gnome.
At Xerox PARC in the seventies (birthplace of clicky, responsive interaction, and huge influence on modern desktop computing), the guiding principle was to make everything usable by children. Only then did they know it was designed properly for adults.
David
On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, you wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, John wrote:
Wim De Smet wrote:
John Peter Tapsell said:
Just to troll....
...
I agree (almost) completely. We don't want to dumb it down to the point where one doesn't see what the os is doing (i.e. Windows).
I couldn't disagree more. The user interface should be as independent from the OS structure as possible. The aim of a UI is to be usable. It should help users of any skill level perform the tasks they need to perform.
Bingo! I think we have hit on what I mean.
I feel the UI should _not_ be as independent from the OS structure as possible. I've taken UI classes etc, and heard these argument, but they are after maxing usability. We should be after raising the users awareness of how things work, and understanding it. I want the UI to be tied to the OS structure as much as possible. I don't want too much abstraction in the UI - this is what leads to clueless users.
No, that doesn't follow. A good UI will make it easy - by itself it will do no more, no less. Users will only remain ignorant of the workings if (a) they don't care about them, or (b) the workings have been obfuscated. Avoiding (b) is one of free software's main goals. But (a) is a personal choice that we shouldn't attempt to control. Computer science, quoth Dijkstra, is about computers in the way astronomy is about telescopes.
But again your users are just users - and I totally agree if that is the case. What I'm trying to say is that we should force the users into being more technical then users, and having to have some understanding of the underlying workings. Do you agree/disagree that if use the base assumption we want more technical users, then we can't abstract the UI too much, and we have to make the UI closely related to the inner workings?
I agree with everyones points about abstracting etc for lusers, but we shouldn't aim to cater for them, instead aim for the more techinical user - the ones that will be interested in knowing how to fix simple problems by themselves, and not be afraid to use a terminal.
By all means aid the hackers in their study of the equipment we're all using; that's great, the knowledge there protects much freedom. Meanwhile everybody else in the world (literally everyone) has their own ideas about what's cool. Imagine what you could do if your integrated development environment was a starship holodeck...
oooohhh, pooorrrnnnn
You want to aim gnome at usable by a luser, i want to aim gnome at being usable by newbies. So what if the learning curve is steeper, if they are afraid of learning [about telescopes], then don't use gnome.
At Xerox PARC in the seventies (birthplace of clicky, responsive interaction, and huge influence on modern desktop computing), the guiding principle was to make everything usable by children. Only then did they know it was designed properly for adults.
Um, aren't children generally a lot better at this then adults? :)
David _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@fsfeurope.org http://mailman.fsfeurope.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discussion
John Peter Tapsell wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, you wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, John wrote:
I feel the UI should _not_ be as independent from the OS structure as possible. I've taken UI classes etc, and heard these argument, but they are after maxing usability. We should be after raising the users awareness of how things work, and understanding it. I want the UI to be tied to the OS structure as much as possible. I don't want too much abstraction in the UI - this is what leads to clueless users.
No, that doesn't follow. A good UI will make it easy - by itself it will do no more, no less. Users will only remain ignorant of the workings if (a) they don't care about them, or (b) the workings have been obfuscated. Avoiding (b) is one of free software's main goals. But (a) is a personal choice that we shouldn't attempt to control. Computer science, quoth Dijkstra, is about computers in the way astronomy is about telescopes.
But again your users are just users - and I totally agree if that is the case. What I'm trying to say is that we should force the users into being more technical then users, and having to have some understanding of the underlying workings. Do you agree/disagree that if use the base assumption we want more technical users, then we can't abstract the UI too much, and we have to make the UI closely related to the inner workings?
I would say that, while the UI should try to show the inner workings of the OS as far as as it can, this should not be odne in a way that comprimises usability. Usability first, technical accuracy second.
Last time I checked, for example, the physical compoenents of my hard drive weren't structured as a heirarchy. However, the file system (on this box, FAT32 :( ), is heirachical. I find that it's a lot easier to use that way.
I agree with everyones points about abstracting etc for lusers, but we shouldn't aim to cater for them, instead aim for the more techinical user - the ones that will be interested in knowing how to fix simple problems by themselves, and not be afraid to use a terminal.
Nobody was talking about hiding the terminal or anything. Even the Sun report just suggested rneaming it to "command prompt" or somesuch. Nothing prevents us from catering for the non-technical user ("luser"- I don't like that term in this context, it's condescending) AND the technical user AND the hacker, all at the same time.
On 25 Jul 01, at 3:48, John Peter Tapsell wrote:
But again your users are just users - and I totally agree if that is the case. What I'm trying to say is that we should force the users into being more technical then users, and having to have some understanding of the underlying workings.
I'm one of them - more or less - just trying to make the transition. Lets face it, whats really stupid about that sun-study is that they used totally uninformed people. Nobody is going to use the gnome (or the K-desktop) w/o getting to know their system better then they ever needed or were able to know their old one. The testees werent told the first thing (not even that the gnome isnt an OS). I think you'd get what you want with an easy to use UI with easy to access info about the underlying structure. Its alot more fun if you 'discover' what youre using, isnt it? And if people are basically scared of the computer anyway youll only intimidate them the other way.
Do you agree/disagree that if use the base assumption we want more technical users, then we can't abstract the UI too much, and we have to make the UI closely related to the inner workings?
But maybe make the inner workings 'visible', most non-hackers are more visual I think
I agree with everyones points about abstracting etc for lusers, but we shouldn't aim to cater for them, instead aim for the more techinical user - the ones that will be interested in knowing how to fix simple problems by themselves, and not be afraid to use a terminal.
That could be a problem and I dont think its got to much to do with the colour (black). I think, though, that bug-reporting and its import could be made more obvious.
Um, aren't children generally a lot better at this then adults? :)
I know a hacker who lets, if possible, his mother test everything he writes. She finds the most obvious bugs, which usually are those he never finds ;o)
greets Joachim
joack@gmx.net wrote:
On 25 Jul 01, at 3:48, John Peter Tapsell wrote:
But again your users are just users - and I totally agree if that is the case. What I'm trying to say is that we should force the users into being more technical then users, and having to have some understanding of the underlying workings.
I'm one of them - more or less - just trying to make the transition. Lets face it, whats really stupid about that sun-study is that they used totally uninformed people. Nobody is going to use the gnome (or the K-desktop) w/o getting to know their system better then they ever needed or were able to know their old one. The testees werent told the first thing (not even that the gnome isnt an OS). I think you'd get what you want with an easy to use UI with easy to access info about the underlying structure. Its alot more fun if you 'discover' what youre using, isnt it? And if people are basically scared of the computer anyway youll only intimidate them the other way.
Believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of people aren't hackers. They don't care how their machine works. All they care about is whether it does work.
I quite like travelling by train. I don't want to be forced to learn about how the train works in order to use it- all I want to do is buy a ticket and get onto the train, then get off when I reach my destination.
Do you agree/disagree that if use the base assumption we want more technical users, then we can't abstract the UI too much, and we have to make the UI closely related to the inner workings?
But maybe make the inner workings 'visible', most non-hackers are more visual I think
I think I'd quite like an example of this. I'm not sure whether I agree with you or not on this point atm.
Quoting Alistair Davidson lord_inh@yahoo.co.uk:
Believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of people aren't hackers. They don't care how their machine works. All they care about is whether it does work.
I quite like travelling by train. I don't want to be forced to learn about how the train works in order to use it- all I want to do is buy a ticket and get onto the train, then get off when I reach my destination.
Learning engineering to ride the train would be like kernel hacking to write a letter. But you still need to know about train timetables, different fares, railway maps, etc.. To use a wordprocessor & email you still need to know your file system, the different possible formats, and how to protect your private correspondence.
Gnome should not (as MS does) create barriers to progression from total newbie, through expert user to hacker. How far anyone chooses to go depends on their needs, but the path should be clear. It is much easier to become an expert user if the structure of the system is plain to see. Lets not have that *#^!MSpaperclip trying to second guess the user, and inaccessible formatting characters. Rather honestly say exactly what each function does.
Nick Hockings.
On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, you wrote:
No, that doesn't follow. A good UI will make it easy - by itself it will do no more, no less. Users will only remain ignorant of the workings if (a) they don't care about them, or (b) the workings have been obfuscated. Avoiding (b) is one of free software's main goals. But (a) is a personal choice that we shouldn't attempt to control. Computer science, quoth Dijkstra, is about computers in the way astronomy is about telescopes.
But again your users are just users - and I totally agree if that is the case. What I'm trying to say is that we should force the users into being more technical then users, and having to have some understanding of the underlying workings. Do you agree/disagree that if use the base assumption we want more technical users, then we can't abstract the UI too much, and we have to make the UI closely related to the inner workings?
A consistent but most unhelpful way of thinking about users. Would you agree that free software so far has catered pretty darn well to the low level types? I think it has, I think we've got the bottom levels in good shape. The technicals are the janitors of software, polishing their telescopes. Now let's see how we can help the scientists and artists look to the stars.
I agree with everyones points about abstracting etc for lusers, but we shouldn't aim to cater for them, instead aim for the more techinical user - the ones that will be interested in knowing how to fix simple problems by themselves, and not be afraid to use a terminal.
The two aren't at odds. Have a lovely, simple, idea-enriching GUI then press F12 for a CLI. Free software should absolutely not be about making people do distracting, menial things for themselves. When the lower levels are in good shape and well-manned, as I believe they are, it shouldn't take more than a request to the appropriate forum for quick and effective janitorial help.
David
Hi,
On Tue, 24 Jul 2001, Nick Hockings wrote:
There is another side to usability: available means of input and output.
My area of interest is medical informatics, especially computer aided diagnostics.
To be useful and medical computer system needs a method of input that does not impede the Doctor/paramedic/nurse in any way, YET captures all pertinent information.
Practically this means voice input on a palmtop. "pocket-linux" runs on at least two current palmtops that I know (Acompli and Ipaq). However I know of no freesoftware app that can do speach-to-text, nor any that can do hand-writting-to-text.
AFAIK speech-to-text gives you the options of using ViaVoice or, um, ViaVoice. But it isn't Free, nor AFAIK is it compatible. There's KVoiceControl which, as it sounds, is a KDE desktop app... and CVoiceControl, which uses the console. However, this is isolated word recognition only.
Both of these are very important modes of input for palmtops and 3rd Generation cellphones.
Agreed, but definitely one of the most difficult pieces of software to write...
Text-to-speach is important for blind, visually impaired, and dyslexic people. Does anyone know of a Free app to do this? Imagine being able to write and xhtml page and use it either in a website, or a Gnome Atchung! presentation with text to speach by using different XSL style sheets.
Festival: http://www.cstr.ed.ac.uk/projects/festival/manual/festival_2.html#SEC2
It's released under a free licence. It's not however GPL - they claim that their commercial partners preferred their version. If anybody would care to take a look at it...? I've looked at the gnu.org licences page and it isn't on there so far unless it's a copy of something I don't recognise.
It works ok, but needs tuning (lots of it) and takes about 30 seconds to process one phrase on a P75...
I don't expect GUIs on mouse-keyboard-screen interfaces to change much. The real potential for improving usability lies with new types of I/O hardware, and the apps to exploit them. The "holy grail" (and a long way off) is natural language interpretation and generation. For the time being, precise terminologies may allow this to be faked up for specialist apps like medical informatics.
Um... depends who you intend the system for. I personally have limited use for advanced natural language interpretation, though generation is very useful indeed under certain circumstances. Whilst I'd appreciate the ability to condense conversations into speech and review them later, I'd prefer a compact keyboard/Twiddler for wearable applications, due to the speed limitations inherent in human speech. Can see the medical uses though.
Em