gui study do users want to build solutions let me point out that both gui based word processors and text based formatters both have a language one happens to be mouse and action based and the other symbol based true but that s beside the point this is a fact about an abstract model of what the gui users are doing not about what they actually are doing this abstract model is only apparent from the perpective of a programmer of the system nb some users may see it too but only when they put aside the work at hand and start thinking like a programmer i m not saying that the programmer s perspective is evil or stunted after all that s what i do too i am saying that ui designers must carefully distinguish between the user programmer conceptual models and they must ultimately serve the user of the system not the builder of the system i don t recall the actual stats but something like in people can be categorized as a symbol manipulator it would be interesting to know more about the meaning and basis for this claim at any rate i don t think this is evidence that of users think like programmers bankers financial analysts structural engineers these are all people whose work you could characterize as primarily symbol manipulation but what they do is not programming and programming is not required to do what they do to restate my previous point yes users want to build their own solutions no they do not want to do programming to accomplish this
