Re: The target user and consequences

[Soren Harward <soren cinternet net>]

Ooh, I think we may have a good analogy here:

At first, did your girlfriend know exactly where everything in the kitchen
is?  Did she expect it to be exactly the same as hers?  I don't think so.
As long as you arrange everything logically (which I trust you did) once
she found where one knife was, she knew the rest of the knives were there.
Then, after spending a little time in your kitchen, she gradually learned
where everything was.

How this applies to GNOME: we are making a completely different UI here.
We should not attempt to duplicate Windows, Amiga, Mac, Commodore 64,
Atari, Altair or any other interface that's been done before.  The
transition doesn't NEED to be seamless, it just needs to be logical and
consistent.  So what if Windows decides to put its "quit" in the "file"
menu and Windows users expect it to be there?  We don't have to do it
because it's OUR interface.  WE are designing it.  Please, guys, remember
this whenever you are tempted to say "Well, it's been done this way
before" (which yes, I have on occasion said).

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On Fri, 7 Aug 1998, JR Tipton wrote:

>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.