Re: [Nautilus-list] Integration of gmc and nautilus desktop directories.

[Ben Ford <ben kalifornia com>]

Tuomas Kuosmanen wrote:

> > In fact, I remember suggesting user testing to you on #nautilus, and I
> > don't recall anyone calling your idea "evil" or "wrong". So seriously,
> > do some formal user testing, it's a really educational experience.
>
> I dont know if this counts as "user testing" but this is from my
> original mail you replied to:
>
>    "I talked with Garrett Le Sage (the linux.com artist guy) and he
>    said he had a lot of trouble explaining to his family (he installed
>    Linux with GNOME for them) that the files they saved did not go to
>    the desktop, but they had to find them in this special directory.
>    And those people were not never-used-a-pc-before -level, they had
>    some computing experience beforehand. They learned how it worked and
>    have no problem now. But
>    should they need to learn such at thing at all?"
>
> Now these are real people who *did* have trouble with this thing.
>
> Best,
>
> Tuomas
Here are the results of *my* user testing.

My mom is 50 some years old.  She had never really used a computer in 
her life until late '99.  This is the same lady who when by necessity 
had to type a letter in WordPerfect back in the old DOS days would 
request that I open the document, prepare it for her to type, and when 
she was done typing to save it and print.  She basically used it as a 
glorified typewriter and "couldn't" learn more.

I moved out of state (to Cali) in '99 and as a going-away present, built 
her a computer and installed KDE (sorry, gnome wasn't ready) on it.  I 
showed her once, "This is where all your stuff goes" while clicking on 
the "home directory" icon.  That was all it took.  She is now halfway 
proficient on it without any further help, other than to write a script 
to kill nutscraper when it went nuts.

I am curious to know what OS Garrett's folks were used to, as Windows 
has defaulted to "My Documents" for years.  Does Mac use the desktop as 
$HOME?  I don't think MacOSX does.

-b