Re: [Usability] New Paradigm of Computing for GNOME 3.0



On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 15:17 +0800, Allan Caeg wrote:

> I stumbled upon Matt Asay's article named The application is the new 
> operating system http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10448883-16.html . I 
> love the fact that a guy who think this way Canonical's new COO. This is 
> what open source needs.

I am, in contrast, rather worried about following the hype, the risk of
(continuing) to ape Apple without ever really getting into the process
that leads to the kind of decisions they make.

"Focusing on the user" is, when left alone like that, empty and useless
if you really think about it. Who's that mystical user existing in
isolation? (I'm glad there was no "average" tacked on.) Developers are
no users?

You better think about the whole system, including all kinds of users
with varying needs and wants and the whole software life-cycle, if you
want the best outcome (you need to know how that would be measured,
too).

I you study what Apple does, you should keep in mind how they earn
money. You think the iPad is all about focusing on users? Are you sure
it has nothing to do with taking as much control as possible over
offering software? The actual underlying goal of making more money?

Good luck with trying to stretch what you call a new paradigm to
accommodate software development, authoring and 3D software ;)


> I read this idea on the iPad HIG. It doesn't show the filesystem and 
> it's implied that a person can access selected files by opening a 
> certain application. This way, the user flow on the computer would be 
> more similar to the real world. You go to your office suite to open your 
> work-related documents. It's like going to your bedroom to sleep. The 
> user flow of opening a file explorer to locate a file and open it with a 
> certain application isn't as close to people's mental model.

You seem to assume that applications are a better first level of access
than documents for non-technical-minded users. An advantage would be to
have a filter in place, no need to give access to all files in one
place. But all you do is putting file managers into applications. What
if a user wants to share files with others? What if he needs to make
room on his system? How to handle backup and restore?

Do you think a user will be better at recalling which application he
used for something than recalling what a document was about?

Then, when facing the problem of having lots of little and subtly
different file-managers inside applications, one day someone will
propose a new paradigm: achieve a consistency of user experience like
never seen before by replacing all the integrated file-managers with a
single external one ...


I don't think somehow trying to hide the file-system is a good solution.
I think the solution would be a better file-system, one that stops
trying to be a tree and instead does what we already see in photo and
music library-style applications in an uniform way.


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/



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