Ken Dickey: Evolution and Lessons Learned using MetaProperties

We'll begin with announcements and a few lightning talks, followed by the main talk. Please suggest topics you'd like to hear or present, in the discussion section of this page!

This gathering will be simulcast and recorded at https://youtu.be/_9HbMPvHE4o

From Ken:

"One way to deal with complexity in user interface is to hide and gradually reveal capabilities. Smalltalk IDEs typically have a wealth of tools available with just a few clicks, but it sometimes takes a new user quite a while to find these and understand their use.

"MetaProperties are added annotation objects which describe the visual properties of Morphs. These allow one to Drag 'n Drop or edit visual properties from a Morph's menu.

"I use Morph menus all the time, so no problem for me, but I made a fundamental UI mistake: I added something special but did not show that it was special. Confusion and lack of use followed, of course.

"Making things easy to use is frequently hard!

"Have a look at what I am doing to make affordances more visible, and perhaps you can suggest alternative ways to enhance usability.

Hope to see you here!"