Re: Why GNOME Hackers Should Care about Usability

[Drazen Kacar <dave arsdigita com>]

nils wrote:
> So in other words, a home user has a different mental model of
> the computer system than that of a (software) engineer.

Not only engineers. Computer users were trained into a mental model by
their systems. So even a non-engineers will have a different model if they
previously worked on different systems.

A nice example of a clash happens with the web applications. Suppose you
have a web page which asks you to input some text in the text area.
Besides you have an option to choose if your input is "Text" or "HTML".

I suppose you won't have a problem with the "HTML" choice if you know what
HTML is. But what about "Text"? When another web page serves the content
you type, will it appear in monospaced font or not? Who is supposed to
insert line breaks, you or the application?

I'm from a Unix background, so "Text" means "the way it looks on a
terminal," therefore monospaced font and I'm the one who inserts line
breaks. But it's not so for people who didn't work on terminals.

If I'm on a Unix system, I would expect it to behave like a Unix system.
If I'm on some other system, I'll try to accomodate. But I don't want a
Unix system which tries to behave like some other system. OTOH, people who
come from some other system might like if their Unix system tries to
behave like a system they are familiar with. Both wishes boil down to "I
don't want the change, because I'm comfortable with what I know."

-- 
 .-.   .-.    I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had
(_  \ /  _)   about you.
     |
     |        dave arsdigita com

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