Re: Call for constructive user criticism.

[nelson-gnome crynwr com]

Miguel de Icaza writes:
 > 
 > > and why would you want to cut yourself off from end user opinion?  that's
 > > a very Microsoftian philosophy - in my opinion.
 > 
 > I am not cutting anyone here.  But being a programmer I sort of know
 > what I want in my applications.  I just do not know what a user who
 > does not care about computers and wants to use a "free-software based
 > computer appliance" expects.

Oy vey.  There are some hidden assumptions here.  Is the usability of
a user interface a popularity contest or a matter of scientific
exploration?  If you think it's the first (and for all I know it might
be), then yes, you would want to present multiple choices to users and
say "which one do you find easiest to use"?  A scientific experiment
would probably videotape a random sample of the user population and/or
instrument the the GUIs, and make measurements of the usability of the
GUI.  How fast do they make menu selections?  How often do they
underrun / overrun their menu selection?  How often do they make the
wrong menu selection?  There are lots of questions one could ask.

Seems to me, though, that the first thing that's needed is user
interface themability, e.g. the ability to move the scroll buttons to
one end of the scroll bar.  Either way, the users or the scientists
need to choose.

-- 
-russ nelson <rn-sig@crynwr.com>  http://crynwr.com/~nelson
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