> Turn the issue around: don't blame software builders for producing bad
> designs. Blame the software for letting them produce bad designs.

What I hear in the quote above is that we should start with a “imbedded in the
image and shared through packages” model of the strengths and limits of average
(and after that, exceptional) human perception, cognition, memory, habits,
habituation, dexterity, and social/cultural networks (and even affective mood
per Captology [1]& “Emotional Design”[2], and narrative, all three important
areas for teens (typically laden with angst) and eToys).

Then we can test a proposed UI against that model. Such a distributed model
would also fill the role of instructor to developers who haven’t yet developed
an awareness of such human factors (or social graces :). This is in keeping
with the Smalltalk philosophy: “Let them see the source all the way to the root
and learn it for themselves from the code.”

I suspect a lot of university researchers would volunteer to help create that
model. ;)

Such an approach would certainly outshine any other application development
environment. We’d also need the discipline to avoid implementing the
“conclusions from the research of the hour” syndrome. (I'm sure MS had done the
research, but keep it locked up in their labs.)

I’ve already put my UI vision on the table for critique:
http://inglang.blogspot.com/2004/11/user-interface-with-3-planes-instant.html#comments

[1] Captology: http://www.google.com/search?q=Captology
[2] “Emotional Design” by Don Norman http://jnd.org/