Re: Template system

[Mark Roach <mrroach okmaybe com>]

On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 16:16, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote:

> Despite the appearance of Windows 95 and the continuing existence of Mac
> computers, the great majority of users directly open a Word processor
> and write text, then save, implicitly acepting the poorer usability of
> the "Save" dialog box when pitted against the system file manager.

I have been hearing this for a long time and it has just never sounded
quite correct to me... can someone point me to a study that has shown
that document-centric when _creating_ files is really is the More Usable
way? 

In my mind, a person thinks "I need to write a letter" so they open the
"letter-writing app" and write a letter, then they think "I need to save
this for later" so they save it (picking a location in the process). The
document-centric way seems the reverse of this, i.e. "Let me find a
location in which I will create a file, which will contain a letter
which I will write."

Like I say, I'm not doubting anyone, but this seems counter-intuitive to
me, and apparently, as you say, hasn't been the way that people actually
do things even though that option is available to them. So maybe it just
hasn't been implemented properly in the past, I don't know. I'm just a
curious lurker, so if anyone has a study that can enlighten me, I would
be very interested.
-- 
Mark Roach