Re: [Nautilus-list] Results of MIT usability testing

["Tom Georgoulias (rn0621)" <tom georgoulias motorola com>]

"Christopher D. Beland" wrote:
> 
> MIT Information Systems has finished documenting its formal usability
> testing on a graphical user interface based on Gnome 1.2, Nautilus
> PR2, and Linux-Athena 8.4 (http://web.mit.edu/is/athena/).
> Test results summary:
> http://web.mit.edu/is/usability/aui/results/results1.html

There is a ton of good feedback at this site, so those of you who
haven't read the results really ought to check it out.  In my comment
below I summarized the result pertaining to my statements for busy
readers who can't read the results in their entirety.

In task 3 mentioned in the test results summary URL (above), the users
were asked to find a file "engineers.txt" and copy it to "/MIT/gtest"
which proved to be a bit more confusing than it should've been.  It's
non obvious how to move a file from one directory to another the first
time you use nautilus, but eventually most figure out how to do it by
dragging it to the appropriate dir in the tree side panel. Other
workarounds included dragging it to the desktop, changing the directory
in Nautilus, then dragging it back, or opening two windows and dragging
it between them.  The test providers suggested a fix to get around the
first workaround by requesting more space between the tree view folders
to reduce dropping the file in the wrong folder.

I think a better approach is one I seem to recall from my usage of
BeOS.  If I'm not mistaken, BeOS had a great feature that allowed you to
right click on an icon and one of the menu options was "move to ->." 
Highlighting that "move to ->" item would then spawn a series of sub
panels that allowed you to traverse the file tree and easily select the
final destination for the file.  This is by far the easiest way I've
ever seen to move a file in a file manager window.  It also allows
control over where files end up because the permissions of the
directories could be used to determine whether or not a user had access
to the directory, and depending on their privileges the sub panel could
either hide or show that directory to the user.  I don't know if that
hide/show feature was in BeOS, but it seems like the next logical step
if this menu sub panel is added.

--tom