You’ve never seen a computer mouse before. You’ve used computers which had text screens, maybe you’ve played games with cursor key controls, maybe you’ve even used some sort of GUI that isn’t controlled by a mouse or other similar device (trackball, trackpad, nipplemouse). In short, you’ve lived down a hole in the ground and have never been exposed to the concept of a computer mouse before.
You find an object someone has just left lying about. It’s a hollow, roughly oval piece of hard plastic with a flat face, into which is set a rubber ball which is free to rotate. A wire cable emerges from one end of the device and this is terminated in a round electrical plug consisting of a metal ring surrounding several small pins. At the same end as the cable, portions of the casing depress slightly, making a faint, but sharp ‘click’ when pushed.
That’s all you know - there are no markings except a serial number - the device isn’t plugged into anything, there is no accompanying documentation and you don’t know how it got there or why.
What would you infer as to the likely function of this device, and how?
The rubber ball would be a BIG clue. I suspect the average person would intuit the function before long. This is especially so if the computer is on, and when they pick up the mouse, a previously unnoticed cursor suddenly jumps a little on the screen.
Edit: optical/laser mouse, computer switched off - all bets are off.
If you’ve used computers before, you may or may not have an intuition as to what this is for.
If you’ve never encountered a computer up close and personal, you’re going to struggle. Hard.
I trained two people a few years back who had never worked with a computer. One of them got the hang of the mouse after a couple of weeks. The other person didn’t. (The other person didn’t get the hang of the computer full stop. After several intensive training sessions, that person was no longer with us, because they didn’t get physical filing systems either.)
Well, if I’ve seen computers I’m probably going to realize that the cable is supposed to plug into a computer, and the buttons are clearly buttons. I’d figure out that it’s supposed to be placed flat side down. Maybe I’d realize that it’s perfectly shaped to have a hand on top of it, in which case two fingers end up square on the buttons. It’s not a big leap to figure out that the ball is there to track motion, but if I would make the ultimate connection and realize what the mouse does, I cannot say. The cable and buttons stuff I’m sure I’d figure out, but the rest, not so much.
I’d probably try plugging it into a computer and see what happens. If I have that option, I’ll have it figured out inside a minute.
I’d like to think I’d figure out it was. With the familiarity with computers allowed from the first paragraph, I’d easily be able to see a lone, unconnected mouse and intuit that it was a computer peripheral of some sort. The plug at the end makes it clear which end points away from the user, and the ball is similar in nature to a trackball, so it’d be easy to intuit that it was a controller; product/FCC compliance labels and the position of the buttons make it clear which side is up, while the Teflon pads indicate one is to slide the odd device around. It’s a trackball puck!
With no computer around and no previous experience with a GUI…
I might assume it was a controller for a games console, perhaps holding it upright with my right hand fingers underneath it to move the ball around and my left hand on the buttons. From there I might deduce that it works better with the device moving on a harder surface.
Other than that, I’m not sure. Some sort of wired remote control for a TV or video?
I can remember the first computer I used with a mouse. It was one of those school computers (an Acorn Archimedes?) and had a great game called Lander that really needed a mouse for control. Before fingering it out for themselves and despite seeing the computer teacher show them how to use it, a few people insisted on treating it like a keyboard. They’d turn it round so that the buttons faced them and rather gingerly moved it when needed.
Well, funny enough, I do remember the first time I saw a mouse. One of my friends growing up always had the newest computers/gadgets (lucky German fucker) and one day while we were getting ready to go out, I looked over at his bed and noticed something lying on the top of his blankets. Since he was in the shower, I started looking it over trying to figure out what the heck it was. He had apparently just gotten it, and hadn’t even hooked it up to his computer yet. I didn’t see the box or floppy or anything else that came with it, so I was left to play with it in my own mind. I’d like to say it took me only moments to figure it out, but the truth is that while the cable told me it was a new computer toy – it didn’t “click” right away. Knowing what I knew about computers at the time (which was a hell of a lot more than many people – this was the mid-80’s) I knew right away it wasn’t a modem (he had one of those, I knew what they looked like!) or an external storage device. Really, it didn’t take me too long to figure it out, and sadly, geek that I am, once I did, I dragged him out of the shower and made him hook it up so we could play with it before going out to party.
If it was a mouse with a ball, there’s a decent chance I’d figure it was for indicating movement into some device (possibly a computer–maybe to play games.) If it was an optical mouse, I might figure it was some sort of wierd sensor or remote control.
Note that I’ve always enjoyed alternate methods of computer input. Touch pad, tablet, mouse, alphagrip, etc. I’ve tried them all. I had the Nintendo thing where you hover your hand over a board with motion detectors, the gun, and the little robot. I’ve only missed the Wii.
this reminds me of theads we’ve done before about meeting aliens from outer space, and whether we would recognize their technology.
Someone suggested an analogy: suppose, back in 1901, someone suddenly found a modern steath jet, would he recognize it? In an age when the only flying machines were balloons, would a person be able to image that a weirdly shaped metal object on spindly legs with small wheels attached was a flying machine?
First time I saw a mouse I had no idea what it was, other than that it must have been something for a computer or other device - maybe a VCR? I still remember the slightly vertiginous feeling of using a mouse for the first time. Pictures on the monitor you could click on?! :eek:
I actually taught a corporate use-this-new-PC class to 50-60 year olds back in 1996. These folks used mainframe green-screen terminals a bit in their jobs. It wasn’t primary, but every workday they’d enter a few commands, print out a few pages & go work whatever was on the paper. They’d been using this system for years.
The company was deploying PCs with terminal emulator software to replace the green screens. These also had a coupleof simple genuine windows apps installed that the workers would have to use.
This was just as Win 3.1 was going out & Win95 was coming in. Some folks had a PC at home, but most did not.
We had several people baffled by the mouse. Maybe 20% of the class recognized it as a remote control, picked it up, pointed it at the screen & pushed a button.
It was an interesting study in human/machine interface. The idea that the current GUI is “intuitive” assumes you’ve got a lot of experience informing the intuition. These folks didn’t have that.
I remember going in to a store in the 80s and seing my first mouse, the friend i was with who showed me the mouse held it in his hand and moved the track ball with his finger and pushed the button with his thumb. I was stunned by its ease of use.
Sorry 'bout that. Your post said no familiarity with a GUI controlled by such a device, but I was familiar with trackballs from arcade games, and assumed I could bring that outside knowledge in. (As an aside, I was using a mouse with my C128 for ages before I got a GUI to use with it.)
I’d be mildly curious about it for a few minutes, then forget about it. If I was a competent computer user, I’d be adept at using other types of controls and it probably wouldn’t occur to me that other devices could be used.
Afterthought (prompted by reading other folks’ answers): Hmm, there is that funny rolling ball thingie on the underside. (as others have said, if it’s optical this would not be present, and the laser equiv would not be noticed, at least by someone as unobservant as me)…
I have a tendency to snap to one understanding and get stuck in it, and the mouse buttons up top would send me thinking “remote control device” as I said. I think I’d continue to think that and would try to incorporate the ball into that notion. If you had a next picture, previous picture set of buttons (or a “toggle light on/off” / “toggle fan on/off” pair for that matter), then there would be some other function you would control by rolling the ball over the surface of (whatever): hmm, what if the slide projector is fancy enough that you can center the image on the screen? the roller ball means you can “aim” it up or left or diagonally.
OK, it could be for a toy tiger. the roller ball controls general movement forward left backward etc, the left button is for jump, the right button is for bite.
A computer controller (assuming I’d never seen a computer with a modern GUI) would never, ever occur to me. The mouse would make no sense without conjuring up the notion of a mouse cursor, which in turn would necessitate visualizing a representation of both the nouns and verbs of a computer as visual elements that could be pointed at and acted upon by the mouse. No way I’d guess upon that.