Re: [Usability] An Attempt at tasks for the FOSD

[Maynard Kuona <knxmay001 mail uct ac za>]

I wasn't talking about preview iconss, or thumbnails, as they are
usually called, but a preview pane in the file selector. The kind that
usually previews the selected document. I think it is mostly useless
because it requires the user select each file and then see what it is.
Thumbnails are better. In that case, it was me misunderstanding, but as
a matter of habit, I make a distinction between thumbnails and previews.
If what you meant was thumbnails, then I think I fully agree with you,
those are very good. This is where the user could choose between icons,
thumbnails, a list or a details view. 

On Mon, 2003-09-15 at 00:38, Bryan W Clark wrote:
> <snip>
> On Sun, 2003-09-14 at 14:27, Maynard Kuona wrote:
> > I think stuff like previews is mostly unnecessary for most people out
> > there. 
> </snip>
> 
> Do you have any factual basis for this?  Maybe some people don't like
> previews, but I hardly think that "most" don't.  Anyway, the real reason
> behind preview icons is that it transcends language barriers and
> culture/age based user mental models.  Instead of showing a movie reel
> to depict what an AVI file could be you show a thumbnail of the actual
> movie.  If someone doesn't know that movies used to (and still do
> sometimes) come on reels and be played on projectors then your generic
> mime-icon just broke that users mental model; they have no idea what a
> reel is and therefore don't know what your icon is trying to convey.  If
> you have the book About Face 2.0 you can reference what I'm talking
> about with a Mental Model of the user.  People of all walks can relate
> very easily to files they've either seen before or created through
> recognition of what the file looks like.  This is why the
> preview/thumbnail is necessary for most people and provides globally
> understood look at what the file is.
> 
> 
> > One BIG issue IMO is the app rembering where it last was. I think
> > there shold be something in the API for this. I think its safe to
> > assumes most people keep their text documents in the same place, so it
> > is good for the app to remember where and also a lot of people probably
> > want to go to the place they worked last. I really hate having to
> > navigate to the same folder 20 times. This should be default behaviour.
> 
> This is a good point and should certainly be implemented in the dialog. 
> Applications should remember where the user last saved and opened a
> file, and bring the user right back to that point. 
> 
> ~ Bryan