Re: On breaking the woohoo barrier...thoughts on how GNOME can get great

["Iain *" <iaingnome gmail com>]

On 7/13/06, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> <quote who="Iain *">
>
> I have been banging on this drum in the Ubuntu community for a while, but I
> guess I haven't been banging it sufficiently loud in GNOME: Whenever we talk
> about GNOME, we *must* talk first and foremost about benefits, and then back
> it up with the features.

Thats it...someone commented that we need to say "Do cool stuff AND
have support for 52 different languages", but no-one actually cares
that we have support for 52 languages. People only care that we
support one language...theirs.

> > I guess first we need to know who we're targetting. I get a sneaking
> > suspicion looking at the apple mac vs pc ads that they realised halfway
> > through that they were maybe portraying the mac as too much of a fun
> > computer and the PC was the work machine.
>
> (Interesting side note - no idea what their focus group responses were for
> these ads, but they've had a pretty distinct negative impression all over
> the place. People tend to identify with comedian John Hodgman's dorky guy,
> rather than Justin Long's smartarse, 'elitist', slacker.)

Really? Is that a comment on how society sees itself?

> "Well, if Linux has amazing stuff like this that I didn't know about,
> then I just want to run Linux."

It wasn't the 52 languages that swayed her?

> > I'm sure I've forgotten something, and this probably turned into a stream
> > of thoughts rather than anything coherent. Oh well
>
> You're not alone - these are very important thoughts that are plaguing many
> minds in the GNOME world and are a direct outgrowth from our massive refocus
> on usability, benefits > features, making users kick arse, and 'universal
> access'. This change in thinking - our collective passion for changing the
> way we (and others) think about the FLOSS user experience - is making waves.

> People are always asking me why Ubuntu has been so successful so quickly...
> The 'Zen of GNOME', and GNOME itself, is a very big piece of that success.

I understand that, and I'm totally not knocking what we've
accomplished so far, hey, I'm still here aren't I? I'm just wondering
what needs to change in how we do things now that how we see things
has changed.

The personas thing and the comments Quim made about Federico's
document are a good start I suppose...2010 here we come and all that.
Let's made Luis proud

iain