Re: Arlo, a little QA comment regarding your interview with linux.com

[Kevin Cullis <kevincu orci com>]

"Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" wrote:
> 
> sullivan eazel com (2000-10-25 at 0802.24 -0700):
> [...]
> > I understand your point, which is that some "preferences" are really just
> > features that aren't used much, and are thus relegated away to a preferences
> > dialog rather than being put into a more obvious place in the program.
> 
> What about options that user never use cos never think about them or
> cos they are so hidden than user preffer keep in one mode, but would
> use more if they know about them / were easy to change? How can that
> options be detected, so the can be put in a better place, and docs be
> writen explaining what the do?

This really is an essential point: screen real estate.  For example, the
minimum screen size should be filled with menu items, not a few menu
items which then have multiple dialog boxes burying various options.  

> I guess there are many other examples about things people like to
> change, or will change if easier. The question is how to decide that?
> Who decides that? Poll? Testing? Not talking if coder will code it,
> just how to find the best recommendation.

User input from various industries, jobs, locations.

> 
> The example about single vs double click, IMO, is pretty obvious. But
> others are really in the gray area, specially those that users never
> thought about cos nobody allowed them to do it.

Regarding single or double click, Macs and Windows use double click to
open a document whereas KDE uses (although I think has an option of
deselecting) a single click.  From a migration from Mac or Windows
standpoint, the default should be double click to open a document.

I use to work at CompUSA in the business sales area and I got permission
to load Linux on a machine (too bad they still don't get it and I'm glad
I'm gone. I hated the work, but learned a lot about users).  I showed
Linux to a number of my business customers and almost without fail, they
said (of KDE), "Where's the Start button?"  The interesting thing is
that GNOME doesn't have to do things EXACTLY like Microsoft, but close
enough lowers migration objections and concerns.  Radical changes must
have radical improvements to get radical migration, incremental changes
or improvements are the easiest to encourage users to adopt new
features.

Kevin

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