Terminal Happiness
In the Dark Ages, the pre-VDT days of newspapering, I worked on a rickety manual typewriter. How I envied Darlene at the desk behind me! I was a reporter-feature writer, while she was stuck with grinding out TV listings and obits; but Irving Leibowitz, the editor, had favored her with a Selectric, and I demanded to know why.
“Well,” Leibo said, “she’s a neater typist.” It mattered. Darlene would feed her Selectric copy to an optical character reader, which helped convert the typing to newspaper print. “There’s another reason, too,” he said.
“What?”
“Darlene has a lousier job than you do,” said Leibo, himself a manual typewriter user, “and just as much typing to do. In fact, more.”
Budgeting for VDTs, you might keep Leibo’s wisdom in mind. He gave out the best equipment not to his higher-ranking people but to those who needed it the most.
I thought of Leibo and Darlene when I read of the Grid Compass executive computer and its original $10,000 price. It might be a splendid machine, but what a waste of money in many cases. The money instead might go to buy the right screens and keyboards for subordinates. So often the difference is just a few hundred dollars, if it exists at all. Don’t give your employees a say in the selection of equipment and then restrict their choices through unreasonable penny-pinching. If you can’t do it the right way immediately, maybe you should wait before you computerize.
Mind you, no terminal or micro is going to be ergonomically perfect. “I’d flunk them all,” said Waters, and he started with the DEC VT100 terminal he was using on his job at the time. The display was plain, old white on black, not the best ergonomically, and it was too dim for many offices. Fortunately, the lighting in his room was subdued. The terminal, however, had other shortcomings—for instance, the lack of simple knobs to adjust the screen’s brightness and contrast. Waters instead had to control them with a series of keystrokes that he was always forgetting. His loudest groans, though, were over the numbers pad to the right of the keyboard. “I count 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9,” Waters said. “I don’t want anything where I count 7-8-9-4-5-6-1-2-3.” That’s how his numbers pad was; that’s how my machine’s is; that’s in fact how most computer pads are.
“Well,” I asked, “isn’t that just like a calculator’s?”
“But,” said Waters, “isn’t it a little confusing to switch back and forth between that arrangement and the numbers of a telephone? Which are in the normal numerical order.”[[37]]
You may disagree with Waters, but his message comes through. Even ergonomics experts can’t always end up in front of the terminal of their dreams. What you and your people want, however, is a sensible compromise.
Ideally, rather than simply seeking the biggest discount through the most massive purchase, you’ll remember that different people need different terminals. You may in fact save money that way.
An executive who hates to type, for instance, and who doesn’t have to, won’t need the same keyboard as a data-entry clerk. It still should be a good board in case he changes his mind, but it needn’t be the most expensive. With a World Bank-style selection committee, you’ll be more sensitive to the needs of different offices, different levels of employee.
Encourage some committee members to spend at least two or three hours with the equipment you’re planning to buy; they may change their minds later—but that’s better than no tryout at all.
Testing my Kaypro at dealers, I wrote test letters, composed sample articles, and tried as closely as I could to duplicate my routine.
Impressed by the low price of the Osborne 1, I gave the little keyboard every benefit of the doubt. And yet, even after several hours, I simply could not adjust. “Just a matter of operator retraining” was how one saleswoman put it after I complained that I kept hitting the return when I wanted a quote mark. And yet I wasn’t about to gamble $1,800 on a machine with a keyboard I might forever hate. Ergonomically, I had an advantage: I was buying just for myself. But a selection committee, made up of different kinds of prospective users—clerks and executives alike—is the next best thing to a lone customer shopping with only himself in mind.
Avoiding the HAL syndrome, your committee should consider, among other things, the following:
THE SCREEN
For heavy-duty viewing, a terminal or computer should have at least a nine-inch screen and ideally a twelve incher. I emphasize the words “heavy-duty.” An executive using a terminal half an hour a week obviously has needs different from a clerk doing tedious data-entry work most of the day. Even the executive, however, should have a screen big enough for unexpectedly long sessions in front of the tube. On the other hand, suppose a bank teller must view just a few columns of numbers every now and then; he may never need a screen bigger than a few inches. Too large a screen, in fact, even in heavy-duty work, may expose one to glary reflections.
Size preferences can be quirky. I’ll make do for the moment with the Kaypro’s nine inches, but I wouldn’t mind a bigger screen; another writer once said he’d like to hook up the same model to a twenty-one-inch monitor.
The next basic is the color. The two sexes have somewhat different tastes. Men, says John van Raalte, an RCA scientist, are less sensitive to colors in the reddish-orange range than are women. That doesn’t mean, however, that, as a rule, women should automatically have reddish-orange monitors. For men and women the optimum range of light sensitivity is usually amber or green. Comfort is high in those ranges, too, at least for most people.[[38]]
Amber screens are popular in Europe, where one study showed a lower error rate compared to green and other statistics said more users liked amber.
American computer magazines have breathlessly praised amber. It’s as if they were fashion publications thrilled by the latest from abroad. But some U.S. experts question the controls in at least one proamber study—for example, the number of volunteers, fewer than two dozen. And Bruce Rupp of IBM points out that it’s harder to produce a steady, flickerless image with amber than with green. What’s more, an executive with a company planning to sell amber terminals said screens of that color burned out faster than did green ones.
Meanwhile, NIOSH says dark characters against a stable white background are especially promising; and Etienne Grandjean, a leading ergonomist with many admirers in the labor movement here and in Europe, agrees.
Perhaps there’s a less jarring transition when your eyes move between the screen and the printed material you may be working with. It sounds logical enough, and in fact that’s what the Macintosh and many other computers use. That’s also the display style I saw in the Newspaper Guild offices in Washington.
“Do you see any flicker?” asked David Eisen, the guild’s research director, who, in the labor movement, is one of the best-informed people on VDTs.
I studied the white background.
“The little lines,” I said, “seem to be rolling into each other.”[[39]]
The machine’s regular operator also saw the roll but said the screen was comfortable, anyway.
The Guild machine, moreover, a Xerox 860, had the ability to revert to white letters against a black background, which would have eliminated the rolling. Would that all screens be as versatile, especially those used in many tasks or by people with different tastes.
No matter what the task, however, don’t get caught up in terminal fashion. Stress the basics. Are the characters, for instance, shaped well? How big? At least .12 inch and preferably .16? Is the dot matrix at least seven by nine? Harry Snyder at Virginia Polytechnic Institute found that seven-by-nine matrixes produced “significantly fewer errors” than when subjects worked with those that were five-by-seven. If you can’t find the information in a machine’s literature, you might use a magnifying glass to count the number of dots making up the maximum widths and heights of the characters. Trying the large “N” and several more letters on my Kay pro, I learned that dot matrix was a mere five by seven—the bare minimum for light use; for a writer it could be better.
You might also back off twenty inches to see if the dots merge almost completely into the letters and numbers. Eisen suggests looking for flaws like “flicker, character blurring at the edges of the screen, and adequate space between the characters and lines.”[[40]] Eisen obviously is looking at VDTs from the viewpoint of the union members. But unionists’ desire for comfort and ease of use often will overlap with employers’ desire for maximum productivity. Woe unto the employer who doesn’t take advantage of the overlap. In fact, Eisen’s observations here on keyboards and screens are within the ergonomics mainstream and shouldn’t be dismissed because of his affiliations.
“The two things you must remember,” sums up Waters, “are legibility and comfort. You may think at first that a five-by-seven matrix is fine. But after six months your eyes may say, ‘No, No!’—and you may get headaches and feel you need new glasses. Actually, you simply may need a better screen. You’ve just got to consider how often, long, and intensely you’ll be looking at the tube.”
When shopping around, you also should ask, “How many letters and numbers—how many columns—can fill the screen?”
For word processing you’ll normally want at least 80 columns across, the standard. Some screens, like that of the Victor 9000 microcomputer, can display 132, which can be just the ticket for spreadsheet aficionados with the right software.
You’ll also want to know if you can highlight selected parts of the screen, for instance, categories of information stashed away in the computer. You might use reverse video—a light background and dark characters if your normal background is dark—to keep track of columns showing names and addresses. Not interested in phone numbers? Then those columns for the moment would be the normal light-dark combination. In word processing, reverse video could show you the blocks of texts that you planned to move or erase or underline.
Two other amenities—more than amenities, in fact—would be easily reachable and adjustable controls for changing brightness and contrast. The Kaypro lacks a contrast control, much to my chagrin. At least I can adjust brightness—a “must” normally and one still “mustier” for people using antiglare filters, which reduce light from the screen.
Keep thinking what you or others will most use the computer for. Color graphics? Fine. But your multicolor monitor won’t display characters as sharply as a black-and-white or monochrome screen would, and the screens might lose their crispness faster and add to the eyestrain of heavy word processing. One-color screens, then, would be best for typical writers and secretaries. On the other hand, if you’re an executive or clerk working with many figures alongside each other, the color monitor might help you and your eyes keep the numbers apart. Might. Some people may object to color except for graphics.
Two kinds of color monitors are common. The composite monitor is technically more like a home TV than the RGB or “red/green/blue” kind. It’s cheaper. But colors blur into each other more than with the latter type.
Whatever monitor you buy, keep the screen clean.
And don’t be surprised if, in a year or so, the characters start looking a little fuzzy. Harry Snyder, a leading expert on the ergonomics of monitors, says the half-life of a tube in heavy use is normally about a year. Don’t stint on replacements and jack up your people’s error rates.
THE KEYBOARD
Remember Raquel toiling at a keyboard attached to her computer?
Maybe she’s happy. She may have a well-built back, a graceful, flexible neck, wrists that don’t quit, or simply a body compatible with her machine and furniture. But I still question the attached board for most people.
Unless Raquel spent many hours on the machine before buying it, she might not have known if she’d be comfortable.
The more time you spend at a keyboard, the more likely you‘ll end up with the right one. Test keyboards thoroughly. If you‘re buying several dozen, you or a staffer might spend a good three or four hours with the machine you’re about to purchase. A difference of just 10 percent or so in the number of keystrokes per hour per operator could mean thousands of dollars annually to your business.
Even if you’re buying a machine just for your own use, you should still put in a good half hour checking out the keyboard. That’s true with any computer. But the odds are stacked against you if you buy one with an attached board. In Norway, in effect, computer keyboards by law must be detachable, and in Germany official standards require them in most cases (an exception exists for, among other things, limited-use portables with built-in screens and keyboards).[[41]] Increasingly, union people here are raising the issue—and quite justifiably, considering the feeling of most ergonomics experts. Detachable keyboards, in fact, were one of the issues over which a California union struck the local Blue Cross-Blue Shield organization.
“Well,” you ask, “what about keyboards on infrequently used machines?”
You might, however, end up using the keyboard more often than you expected. So play it safe. Make all boards detachable. It won’t cost that much more. Also, keep the cords at least four feet long. And unstrap the keyboards from the VDTs in the first place—which sounds insultingly elementary, except that I’ve heard of an absentminded company that, until a labor dispute, had forgotten to do so.
Also, don’t let the best keyboards become status symbols in reverse. A well-meaning but wrong executive on the West Coast brags he does not have a terminal with even a good board. He’s a fast typist but thinks he could spend his time better giving dictation. “An executive typing,” he says, “is like hiring a brain surgeon to give out pills for a sore throat. If you’re paying him $50,000 a year, why should he do a $20,000 job two hours a day?”
Most executives would agree. But this is rapidly changing; more and more executives are tapping out spreadsheets and eventually will do their own word processing. They may bat out rough drafts on computers or word processors, then have secretaries whip the documents into shape electronically without having to retype all of them.
Besides, you can learn typing at any age. And you needn’t be an excellent typist for computers to help you; indeed, with mistakes easier to zap, the worst typists will profit the most. Take a Maryland architect-consultant named Jess McIlvain. Before he got an IBM PC, he just couldn’t write or type at length—worrying that the result “looked like the cat had walked over it.” Two years later he was cranking out reports several hundred pages long.[[42]]
The new breed of managers, of course, may feel at home on the keyboard from day one. Some colleges even now require students to buy computers, many of which they’ll almost certainly use for word processing. What’s more, as you’ll read in Chapter 11, executive keyboards can ease the transition in the future to telecommuting.
So don’t impose your own work habits on a junior executive with fast fingers. Why shouldn’t he or she have a deluxe keyboard if it helps him serve your company better? And you yourself shouldn’t feel awkward with at least a good board for quick memos.
Mysteriously, IBM forsook the Selectric tradition in designing the keyboard of its original Personal Computer, where the left shift key, oddly, isn’t immediately next to the “Z.” The deviation left some computer magazine editors flabbergasted. Companies even started making keyboards for the PC—at several hundred dollars apiece—that retained the traditional layout.
“They’re not like normal keys,” my consultant friend Michael Canyes complained of the ones on the PC itself. “They click on and off like switches.
“A good key,” he said, “gets stiffer as you press down. But the IBM’s are either up or down.”
Some cynics have a theory. Maybe IBM didn’t want the PC to steal too many customers away from the Displaywriter costing several thousand dollars more. Yes, keyboards are a matter of taste, and unlike Michael, I can stomach the switchlike tactile feedback. But the shift location is inexcusable. IBM in effect admitted its goof; the IBM AT, a more powerful cousin of the IBM PC and XT, appeared with a much-improved keyboard.
At least the original IBM PC’s keyboard surpassed that of the tiny, chiclet keys on the first PCJrs. Reluctantly—after sales were flagging—IBM replaced the chiclet-style boards with more conventional ones.
Pity us “users.” Even terminals intended for mainframes and minis can be turkeys. I actually favor my Kaypro board over a terminal—from Digital Equipment Corporation—which Waters once was using with a big mini at work. Blame the old-style programmers who didn’t grow up with word processing. “Most can’t type like a secretary,” says Canyes, “so the manufacturers often skimp on the touch.”
And isn’t it strange? You can buy an electric typewriter with adjustable touch for $200 but not get it in a computer costing fifty times as much.
I asked David Eisen why he hadn’t raised the touch issue. Wouldn’t bad keyboard matches hurt productivity?
“That’s more the companies’ problem,” he said. “We’re more worried about health.” He can’t recall a flood of complaints from Guild members about keyboards with the wrong touch.
Union people, however, have talked about another change, flat keyboards, now popular in Europe. The tops of U.S. boards commonly slant at fifteen degrees. And Waters tells of an experiment where, given the ability to change the angle, most participants settled for the fifteen-degree one. A caveat, however, is in order. Maybe the people ultimately would have done better with a flat board and plenty of practice on it. Perhaps you want an adjustable board. But for me, anyway, it won’t matter as much as touch.
Another issue is the QWERTY keyboard versus the more modern layouts.
“QWERTY” means the first six letters found on the boards of nearly all American computers and typewriters. It’s a nineteenth-century legacy—a bad one. The early typewriters couldn’t keep up with the nimbler typists, so the machines’ designers thwarted the humans. QWERTY isn’t alphabetical, it doesn’t bring together commonly used letters like “t,” “h,” and “e,” nor does it use finger muscles properly. The Dvorak board and other latecomers should work better. In practice, though, they might confuse typists, so here’s a solution. Let us old-fashioned people QWERTY away. But think about buying machines you can switch over for people trained on more efficient layouts. A program like Smartkey—which electronically changes the keyboard—might be the answer if you also relabel keys on machines used by Dvorak typists. The Apple II(c) even has a switch on the top of the machine to go from QWERTY to Dvorak. Some say the Dvorak improvement is dramatic. Waters isn’t so sure. He says some studies have indicated that the Dvorak board offers as little as a 5 percent increase in speed and little reduction of errors. “So in the end,” says Waters, “most people in the industry have decided not to tinker with the key arrangement.”
No matter how they’re arranged, your keys shouldn’t be shiny; a matte surface is good. So are neutral colors rather than black and white, except, says Eisen, for function keys. My Kaypro sins. Its keys, like those on Digital Equipment’s VT100, are a gleaming black, which, however, doesn’t matter that much to me, since I can control my lighting and normally don’t look down at the board when I’m typing. (Some other Kaypros have black matte keys.)
Function keys—the ones that let the operator delete a word or add a paragraph with a single touch—should ideally be a different color from the main keyboard’s. The same for number pads. The function keys if possible should have labels indicating their purpose. If not, a chart near the function keys might show, for instance, that “P1” “Deletes Word.”
Some people, however, say that function keys really slow you down, that they make you take your fingers off the main keyboard. I basically agree. The same would hold true for the use of Macintosh-style mice.
SPECIAL ERGONOMIC FEATURES
A dream VDT tilts. It swivels. It can move up and down on a pedestal. It helps you avoid back strain, stiff necks, glare, and headaches. It adjusts, so you don’t have to. A good VDT can help compensate somewhat if you lack ...