Re: [Usability] user levels, etc.



<quote who="Luis Villa">

> It has a selection bias towards the uneducated and inexperienced (the
> educated and experienced have better things to do than sit and play with
> boxes while being watched.)

They are usually paid. ;) GNOME may have some issues with this, however, so
tie your family and friends to the computer chair and make some happy home
videos.

> User testing also prioritizes short term UI issues over long term UI
> issues. Not to harp on this example, but... everyone I know who has tried
> using ~/ as their desktop has found it vastly superior (from a utility
> perspective) and stuck with it. User testing won't reflect that.  It'll
> reflect that when given 30 seconds to find something in the configuration
> screen, the additional option of using ~/ instead of ~/Desktop clutters
> things up.

Did we actually get any really good usability testing done on this? Did
Eazel? I really do agree that ~ as the desktop is better. *Hackers* may have
a lot of files in their ~, but everyone else? :)

> Because user testing is biased towards these things, it is not and cannot
> be the end all and be all of UI design. A strong notion of common sense
> has to be injected, and many of the things we're talking about here don't
> pass that second test.

I don't really agree with your points though; I think user testing
can/should be targeted specifically to round these problems out. Whenever I
try something on people, I take those who care, those who don't, those who
are familiar, and those who are not.

You inject the common sense into your analysis, based on the findings of
your nicely rounded group of people.

> More importantly, and this brings us back to where I started, I don't
> think we have to make a choice about being people-friendly and being
> hacker-friendly. It's a false dichotomy; it's the lazy way out. There
> are very compelling reasons to work past that and allow both camps to
> coexist, and so we should.

Yes, I agree with this. But I don't agree that it means throwing simplicity
and minimalism out the window. ;)

> > [1] I can't wait for the "usability is communism" argument. It will be
> > hilarious for the Australian/European participants anyway.
> 
> The topic in my home lug's channel at the moment (total coincidence, long
> story) is 'marx, engels, lenin, luis'. So... it may come up but I won't be
> the one starting it.

In a small channel on gimpnet:

  "USABILITY is COMMUNISM: Have you, or have you ever been interested in
  GNOME usability?"

;)

- Jeff

-- 
    "Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same     
                     thing as division." - Greg Leblanc                     



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