Re: [Usability] New Sound Preferences and Volume Control

["Diego Moya" <turingt gmail com>]

2008/12/12 Dokuro <dario soto gmail com>

Diego Moya <turingt gmail com>

they only way to make the hole interface make changes easily for
regular users, is to create fixed preferences defaults for typically
installed applications
this way you can have ppl to select:
 "working",
 "watching movies",

This is a good way, but it's not the only one :-)

If you create controls that are direct mappings of the user mental model, you'll provide a simple interface that covers their needs. And you won't find the problem of "I haven't found every possible default that would make sense for some user out there", because such mapping allows each user can tweak the interface to their heart's contents.

The tricky part is determining which one is the correct mental model to represent, of course. It certainly isn't "I want to control the volume for every application in my system", :-P and sometimes it also isn't "I want to prepare sound to perform one task in a predefined narrow set of possibilities".