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The technique of building prototypes on paper and testing them with real users is called low-fidelity prototyping or "lo-fi" for short. The value of prototyping is widely recognized, but value is not always gained in practice. Lo-fi prototyping, which requires little more in the way of implementation skills than the ones learned in kindergarten. Paper prototyping is potentially a breakthrough idea for organizations that have never tried it, since it allows to demonstrate the behavior of an interface very early in development, and test designs with real users. If quality is partially a function of the number of iterations and refinements a design undergoes before it hits the street, lo-fi prototyping is a technique that can dramatically increase quality. It is fast, it brings results early in development and allows a team to try far more ideas than they could with high-fidelity prototypes. For years software developers have used everything from demo-builders to multimedia tools to high-level languages to build prototypes.

The term cooperative problem solving means the software and the person using it are partners in the task-at-hand, bringing complementary strengths and weaknesses to the job. Some software does try to act as a "painkiller," in that it expects its users approach with a problem or question, and it responds with whatever its designers thought would be a treatment for that need. The typical database front end is an example. On the other hand, general purpose software, like spreadsheets, are very powerful tools for understanding. Strengths and weaknesses of computers and humans complement each other nicely. Cooperative problem solving approaches exploit the asymmetry of the communication process. Humans use common sense, define the common goal, decompose problems into sub problems, and so on. Computers provide external memory for the human, insure consistency, hide irrelevant information, and summarize and visualize information. Cooperative problem solving systems serve as cognitive amplifiers of the human." Strong artificial intelligence isn't necessary for a really intelligent solution.

The article discusses software development facilitate understanding. Richard Saul Wurman is an architect and designer of tools for understanding. He designed or influenced the design of the PacBell Smart Yellow Pages, some innovative city guidebooks and a guide to medical information, among other things. In a special issue of the publication "Design Quarterly", Wurman uses the metaphor of hat racks to talk about design for understanding. What he has to say is worth the attention of software developers. When writers and designers want to explain something, they use visual "hat racks" (maps, diagrams, charts, lists, time lines) that help us understand how our world is organized. Information hats may be hung on these racks to reveal patterns, connections, and relationships. As the scientific visualization community has found out, one of the exciting things about computers is the way they let us dynamically change the racks on which our information hats are hanging, one can see the same information in many different ways.

This column addresses three different topics in short order. The heading "Planning for Future Computers" reports on a study of the growth in desktop computing power and draws conclusions that relate to planning long-term software development. The study focused on desktop and portable computers in the $1000-$5000 price range. Hopefully the results are valid for a much wider price range for some great papers on similar growth on the very high end. Historical data was gathered on the price and performance of small computers since 1983, performed regression analysis of the data to create a model, then used the model to project the trends into the future. Secondly, "Interface Design When You Don't Know How?," discusses the need for interface specialists on a software team, and points out difficulties in trying to use them. Finally, the topic "Design From a Dramatic Perspective" reports on readers' responses to ponderings of the author about Brenda Laurel's book, "Computers As Theater."

Presents several letters to the editor on interface design, published in the May 1992 issue of the journal Communications of the ACM. Significance of requirement specifications for the end users of interface designing; Description of features to be included in requirement specifications for maximum benefit to interface designers; Possible applications of an interface design.