Re: Conceptual, Semantic, Syntactic and Lexical Design

As I said, old graphics people invented this, and sure enough, this is Steve Feiner's course
- Steve is a co-author on later editions of Foley and van Dam's classic Computer Graphics text.
So, no shock there, it's what's in his book ...

As for Conceptual Modelling and the SE community, see

Cockton G., "Critical Issues: Conceptual Modelling," in Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction, eds. J. Larson and C. Unger, North Holland: Amsterdam, 405-410, 1992.

There's some confusion in your thread William.  You began by saying you didn't get this conceptual
stuff.  Now you're saying that the stuff you don't get will be gotten by software engineers because
it's the only sort of stuff that they will get, even if you can't.

The above (old) Working Conference Report makes it absolutely clear that they don't get it.

It's all woolly and ungrounded.  Even use cases are better.  Even ER-modelling is better.

As I keep saying, no need to turn back the clock, just slip something better into the Conceptual
slot - all the user-oriented OO stuff would be a fine start, but TKS would be even better.  Note
also that 100s if not 1000s of developers are also OK with personas and scenarios.  Beats some
horrible looking frame style text any day.  Note what my report for the same working conference was
3 years on:

Cockton G., " Using the Human Context in Interactive Systems Development", in Engineering for Human-Computer Interaction, eds. C. Unger and L. Bass, Chapman  and Hall, 339-347, 1995.

Just need to move you on three years and we're there!

Cheers
Gilbert

----- Original Message -----
> Thanks again. I hope this doesn't come too much as a shock to you, but
> this 20-year-old theory is alive and well and is being taught in HCI
> courses around the world (see for example, Columbia's user interface
> design course for Fall 2003:
> http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/graphics/courses/csw4170/classes/UItheory.pdf )
>
> Worse than that, look at what passes for user interface design in the
> software community. I'm afraid it's a matter of choosing
> approaches that you think have some mileage with your target audience. Conceptual
> modelling has been part of OO design for the past 10 or 15 years. If
> only we can get developers to think of the UI concepts from a user's
> perspective (and better still, of course, find out what the concepts
> should be through ethnographic observation).

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