Re: Prototyping the next generation panel?

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 28 Oct 2008, at 18:36, Karl Lattimer wrote:
> Gather up data from humble users, performing a specific set of tasks
> which are challenging enough and enough like real life to build up
> decent data sets so we can tell what's wrong with it before we write
> _real_ code.


On a related note, saw this article about Windows 7 today, which  
includes some info on their new taskbar:
<http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081028-first-look-at-windows-7.html 
>

"Through the Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP), an  
optional, off-by-default feature of many Microsoft programs, the  
company has learned a great deal about the things that users do. For  
example, from CEIP data Microsoft knows that 70% of users have between  
5 and 15 windows open at any one time, and that most of the time they  
only actively use one or two of those windows."

Although you certainly wouldn't use data like that as your only source  
of design input, it's the sort of concrete information about our users  
that we still seem to be rather lacking.

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems