Re: Nautilus 2.6 - We're going all spatial

[Ettore Perazzoli <ettore ximian com>]

On Wed, 2003-09-17 at 05:34, Seth Nickell wrote:
> > > > > 2) Many of the people who do understand Nautilus will use it less for
> > > > > simple tasks
> > > > 
> > > > Have you tested this?
> > > 
> > > User testing is not a particularly good technique for determining this.
> > > It is simply one HCI technique out of many (when its useful its a good
> > > technique because its comparatively easy, cheap, and fast). A long-term
> > > use study would be much more appropriate. Have I conducted a long-term
> > > use study? No.
> > 
> > Then where is (2) coming from?  Is it just a guess?
(...)
> It is coming from a trained-designer-with-a-formal-background-in-HCI's
> analysis of the problem. This analysis is formed based on my knowledge
> of the general effects of increase in cognitive friction on people's
> behavior patterns in conjunction with a general sense of the problem
> domain.

So it's a guess.  A fairly educated one, but it's still a guess.

Since other experienced
trained-designers-with-formal-background-in-HCI's who presumably
actually user-tested this stuff seem to disagree quite strongly with you
(Apple has tdwfbih's, right?) I think you need to try to be a bit more
convincing.  ;-)

I don't think you have yet made a very compelling point about this. 
Since it's a fairly earth-shattering move you are advocating, I still
think you need one.

[Windows]
> > Of course it had flaws and there were other ways you could things and
> > have multiple windows for the same object, but that was still the basic
> > model and how people used it most of the time.  The non-spatialness-ness
> > aspects of it weren't even visible to the naive user.  (And we are
> > focusing on the naive user, right?)
> 
> 1) It was too visibly *not* the Object model to allow people to form a
> solid conceptual model. Conceptual model's are fragile things. If people
> find evidence that a model doesn't hold don't hold they will often throw
> it away (or worse, will hold them to the exclusion of developing a new
> model, but not have any confidence in them).
> 
> 2) Windows provided certain artifacts that you would also find in an
> object model but they did not manage to communicate the design model
> with sufficient force to develop a parallel conceptual model.

Once again -- I couldn't care less how broken the Windows way of
implementing the spatial metaphor was.  I was just pointing out a trend
(from spatial to browser-like), and that it would be wise to have a bit
of a stronger argument before making the brave move of moving against
the trend (and many users' expectations).

At any rate, this discussion is getting boring; we keep going back and
forth without any compelling arguments either way.  To me that's a sign
that it's better to leave it as it is -- but if you feel otherwise, all
the more power to you.

Just don't make it sound like it's /completely obvious/ that it's the
right thing to do.  ;-)

-- 
Ettore Perazzoli <ettore ximian com>