On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 07:46, Seth Nickell wrote:
> Most Windows users have not developed a useful conceptual model of their
> file managers. Many more Mac users have. I have observed a big
> difference between how much Mac users use their "filesystem" and how
> much Windows users do. I haven't had the opportunity to observe lots of
> naive MacOS/X users (several, but not enough to substantive draw
> conclusions), so I will be interested to see how things work out there.
>
> - Most Windows users do not open files from their file manager but use
> File->Open
> - Many Windows users will get very confused if the location that
> File->Open goes to is not the default. They have learned to use the list
> from File->Open to double click on the name they want, not the idea of
> browsing around the file tree. They simply know jack-shit about actually
> using the file browser.
I'm surprised at how many people don't believe this is true. One day
watch a group of non-technical computers use a computer, and ask
interesting questions.
My girlfriend has a psychology degree, and had to use Word and SPSS (a
stats program) frequently. Recently I've been migrating her to Linux (by
not fixing my broken Win98 install) and she is happily using Galeon,
OpenOffice and GNOME 2.
She renames files which she saved in Word by running Word ("as its a
Word document") and using File -> Open to get a file manager window.
The MP3 collection is on another disk, I'm happy with /mnt/data/Music
but she couldn't remember this, so I created a symlink to it in her home
drive. She can get to the music, but can't get back to "her work" (~)
again. Other interesting observations include that she didn't know how
to go up a directory in the GTK2 file selector: I told her you press
"..", her reply was that is not very obvious. I totally agree, and even
worse is that "." is shown in the list too. She laughed when I told her
what *that* does.
Never assume that non-technical users understand as much as you think
they do -- much of the time they known a sequence of operations which do
what they want, but don't *understand* what happens.
Ross
--
Ross Burton mail: ross burtonini com
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www: http://www.burtonini.com./
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