Hyperchat Award
Volume Number: 5
Issue Number: 4
Column Tag: HyperChat™
HyperChat™ Award 
By Fred Stauder, HyperChat Editor, Zurich, Switzerland
1st Annual HyperChat Award
Amanda Goodenough author of the Inigo and Your Faithful Camel series, and self
confessed “techno-wimp” is the winner of the first annual HyperChat Award for stack
design. The award was presented at the January MacWorld in San Francisco.
You may ask why this award goes to someone who has written childlike stacks. Let
me tell you a bit of history regarding Amanda’s work. When I first saw Amanda’s stack
“Inigo Gets Out,” in the very early HyperCard days, I thought this was done by some
kid, and it didn’t have any cool scripts or buttons. The reason was that I was a
“techno-macho” as Amanda puts it. My quest in the early days was to look at stacks
that had neat scripts and tricks. I saw many really ugly stacks with excess buttons
dropped, I assume, randomly on cards. One day I saw people playing “Inigo gets out.” I
watched the people. They knew intuitively where to click. Even very small children
saying things like click on the tree. Before long we were all involved in Inigo’s
adventures, totally forgetting about the Mac.
Here was a great example of the Mac being used for it’s original purpose-a tool.
The machine was unimportant, it was what you could easily do with it that was.
I started to look at Amanda’s stacks from a design and human interface
perspective. I discovered that Amanda achieves simple functionality by a few key
insights.
The number of objects on each screen is minimized. Objects are familiar and
recognizable. Controls ( button) are not hidden. With appropriate placement, the eye
focuses on important objects. No Cryptic Keys. It is Fun. Introduction of emotion into
software (not the type when you get a bomb).
Note the similarities with the above and some of the Apple Human Interface
Guidelines. How do you introduce fun into a commercial “serious” software package?
Look at the MPW 3.0 about box, that’s fun; isn’t it? Introducing emotion is a bit more
difficult, but still appropriate in some instances. How many people have had an
AppleLink signed with a happy or a sad face? I have. If you are developing
communication or training software, you should look at how emotion can be a powerful
tool.
I am not saying that you should write a word processor or page layout program
that has Amanda’s style. Actually that would not be a bad idea after all. If you can make
it simple enough for a child to use, you would gain a lot of insight into how to simplify
an interface and retain functionality. Actually that is one of the steps I do to design
interfaces. I mentally put myself in the shoes of a total novice and ask how would they
like to do something, and then integrating those ideas with the needs of the power user.
Too many programmers increase the number of menu items as the number of
features increase. This is a no-no. Don’t leave the user confused. Don´t think the user
must be dumb if he/she can’t use your software. Don’t forget you might have Mega
hours on computers and the end user may only have a few. Peter Higgs from Apple
Australia in his excellent campaign for lawyers, headed it with “Use a Macintosh if you
haven´t got time to learn about computers.”
Let’s strive to make our software more intuitive and easier to use. This is a much
bigger challenge than writing tighter loops.
I believe in the future, when we won´t have to wrestle syntax and structure, we
will be part of a transition from programmers to software designers. As we make
computers faster and smarter, we can let them do our dirty jobs for us.
A aircraft designer no longer has to modify an aircraft and jump off a cliff in it to
test it; he has available to him tools to make his design job easier.
I would also like to congratulate Steve Maller, Robertson Smith, and Elon Gasper;
if there was more than one prize to give they all deserve one. Steve for Rescopy,
Robertson for Stack Starter, and Elon for HyperAnimator. There is one unsung hero in
Amanda’s stack life that I would like to acknowledge, her husband Bob, who is an
inspiration to Amanda and the Hypercard community. Thanks Bob.
Amanda on receiving the award said that she would give the next recipient of the
HyperChat Award a complete set of her software.
MacWorld Goodies
It was quite a spectacular splash the introduction of Supercard. The HyperCard
you always wanted, Color, Big Screen, Multiple Cards... and the list goes on. At first
glance, it looks good.
From the other corner of the Globe (Germany) comes another HyperCard
competitor temporarily named Plus. It too has color etc. One interesting thing from a
programmer’s point of view is the concept of software slots. The company will provide
developers with object code so they can modify to their hearts content. I feel this will
be a future trend.
I will be giving you a full report of the cards compared from a developers
perspective in the near future. Another really exciting thing was the announcement of
HyperTmon. This is a truly useful HyperCard debugger brought to you by Icom.
Last year I saw an expert system tool for HyperCard called HyperX, it is written
entirely in Hypertalk. I thought it wasn’t polished enough to review, and it was a bit
awkward to use. Well HyperX is now Xciting (xcuse the puns). It is really good to see a
company that listens to the end users and constantly improves their product (improves
not just adds new features). This is a product to watch out for. I will be reviewing it as
I make some serious applications with it.