meeting the needs of users

[sungod <as387 yfn ysu edu>]

here's that design fundamental i'd like to see included in the style
guide. note that there are several headings this could fall under in the
"fundamentals of the gnome user interface" section; i'm not sure which
this belongs under but i'd like to keep it as up front as possible. the
sensible choices are "user interface principles," "design
considerations," and "developing the user interface." as all three of
these titles are somewhat synonymous, maybe we should re-evaluate these
titles and create one more suitable for "psychology 101" up front.

anyway, without further ado, let's put this in the style guide:

The needs of the user shall be the primary consideration when designing
the interface for any GNOME application. Because of the broad range of
needs each user will present to a given application, that application
shall be designed to accomodate two separate styles of usage. The first
of these styles is casual usage: the needs of a user who is unfamiliar
with a piece of software dictate that functions within the application
are clearly mapped to their respective controls, that the controls for
those functions are easily discoverable, that the presentation of the
controls is easy to read and understand, and that the controls present
clear feedback when they are used. The primary goal of these design
fundamentals is to ensure that a casual user can make full use of the
application through intuition alone.

The goal for the second style of usage each GNOME application's
interface shall accomodate is ergonomics. For one who uses a GNOME
application frequently or whose productivity is limited solely by the
capability of that application, the relationship between each function
and its control shall be determined by the efficiency and consideration
of human interaction with the control. Although intuitiveness and
discoverability are not primary concerns for this style of usage,
feedback to the user shall still be provided by each control.

If possible, the intuitive, discoverable controls for the casual user
should be efficient and designed well ergonomically, but if a single
control does not meet the requirements for both styles of usage,
separate controls shall be provided to fulfill the needs individually.
An example of a function whose controls are both intuitive and efficient
is the manual typewriter keyboard: although a new or casual user can
find each key easily and produce desired output by typing each letter in
sequence with an index finger, a touch-typist who must produce output in
as little time possible can use the same controls with all ten fingers
and without having to search for each key in turn.

An example of an application which might need two sets of controls to
accomodate both styles of usage is a text editor: functions such as
opening files, maneuvering the cursor within a document, or formatting
text would be easily discoverable through menus in the application
window or arrow keys on the keyboard. A user who makes regular usage of
the same text editor may seek to reduce time wasted maneuvering through
or formatting a document by using keyboard shortcuts for which the
programmer's fingers do not need to leave the keyboard.

--

federico, can you stick this in the "fundamentals of the gnome user
interface" section? thanks.
-- 
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