Cascade Basic Research Corp (CBRC) is an intellectual property company focused on software. We currently have two areas of focus:


WorldView

The basic metaphor GUI’s expose is documents on the desktop. This is unchanged since the very first GUI’s in the late 1970’s. The Xerox Star and the Apple Lisa presented this metaphor.

At the time it made a lot of sense since these systems were explicitly targeting office automation, and so documents on an electronic desktop matched the functionality being offered and users’ conceptualization of what they were doing.

But these days, usage of PC’s has gone far beyond documents on a desktop. Particularly for consumer users, usage today centers around communications, sharing, and web access. For these users, this GUI metaphor is vestigial, it doesn’t match what they are doing.

The most important determinant in whether a piece of software is easy to use or not is: to what extent does the metaphor the software is designed around and presents to the user match the user’s conceptual model of the task they’re trying to accomplish. If the computer’s model and the user’s conceptual model match, then odds are it will be an easy to use piece of software. If they don’t match, then no matter how nicely the graphics, dialog boxes, etc are done, it won’t be a pleasant experience. The user will need to expend a lot of effort in figuring out how to drive the tool, rather than focusing on the task at hand.

Our WorldView project is a new metaphor for today’s OS’s. It differs in two ways: (1) it focuses on communications and sharing, and (2) it encompasses the user’s entire connected world, not just the computer it’s running on.

More info soon.


Contact:

Cascade Basic Research Corp.
3243 134 Ave NE
Bellevue WA 98005
425-702-8547
ericmic:at:casbasres.com