Re: The target user and consequences

[JR Tipton <nails maybe net>]

On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, Stephan Pfab wrote:
>JR Tipton wrote:
>    Why?  Why can't someone who doesn't know a damn thing about GNOME use it
>    efficiently *without* learning?  
> If it would be that simple there would be no flashing 12.00 on
> videorecorders all over the world. Minimise learning: good.
> Make it that simple for some and really difficult for others: bad.

I'm not quite sure I agree on this one.  Video recorders are the worst
example of user interfaces on the planet: model GNOME after that, and
you're looking for disaster (my father puts electrical tape on the clock
so he doesn't have to watch it flash).

Computers are much more powerful and have the opportunity to be much more
highly integrated into the users' lives (they already have).  Think, for a
moment, about everything in a kitchen: it's not so incredibly simple that
you can just walk in and BAM bake a cake.  I surely don't stand a
snowball's chance in hell of making a cake without some instructions.
Then there's my girlfriend: she could whip up a cake that would make you
cry if the tools were there... no matter the kitchen.  I've watched her
run around my kitchen and find every last tool she needed and she knew how
to operate them perfectly.

Why can't GNOME be this way?  It can be.  But if people keep "Thinking
Little" instead of "Thinking Big" we won't see that in GNOME.  We'll see
it in the GUI that blows GNOME out of the water. 
 
Sure, users have to learn to use applications (accountants should have to
learn to do payroll), but should they have to spend time learning the UI
(do accountants have to spend days learning how to operate a calculator)?

>    The toaster accepts that it is a tool of the human; I do not accept that I
>    must conform to the toaster.
> 
> A toaster is much simpler than most applications.
> If you can redesign GIMP so that no learning is involved I would
> like to see it.

I guess I wasn't clear enough, and for that I apologize.

GIMP should require less than one minute of learning for a skilled artisan
who knows what photo processing is about.  And it does a fairly decent job
in my mind, but that's only after coming from a background of working
professionally with Photoshop for years.

>    >   (binding "alt" to menu open seams like a waste of an modifier).
>    I personally find it handy, sometimes, and I once worked with many average
>    users who felt the same way.  I'd watch them hit ALT-F and then use the
>    arrow keys to select save.
> That would mean that we could use ALT for menus. There much 
> more commands so (compare emacs).

How many commands, on average, does the user memorize the shortcuts to?
I've been a "power user" and developer for nearly my whole life and I'd be
hard pressed to tell you more than fifteen or twenty keystrokes in
anything other than FreeHand for the Macintosh: one application!

>    >   (The coders will hate the GUI proposel people
>    >    if they have to change their programs dramatically.)
>    Then the coders shouldn't be coding.  Let them not forget that their best
>    interest is the user's best interest, same as the GUI Style Guide people.
> The GUI designers can not force the coders to do so. 
> We should give them a reason to do so.

Yes they can.  If the GUI guys put their foot down and say, "this is the
way it has to be," then at least one coder will follow.  And that one
coder will get everyone's business.  Think Real Life here.  The Linux
community is quickly being introduced to Real Life.

> If we say, whatever you did so far is garbage. Do it our
> way, but we don't code. That would seem incredibly arrogant.

It is a terrible but essential burden of the GUI guys to be, to a degree,
arrogant.

> We could come aup with a standard gradually. So that coders
> don't have to change their porgram drastically in 2 years,
> just because we could not agree on  the names of some menus.

I agree, but I say we shouldn't be afraid to change it when we know what's
best.

william r. tipton