Re: [Usability] user levels, etc.

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Tue, 2001-11-13 at 03:01, Luis Villa wrote:
    > I think GNOME should focus primarily on making the 90%-of-users feature
    > set work as well as possible, even if that means removing some of the
    > .1%-of-users features entirely.
    
    I think that the next generation of computer users will fit more and
    more into that .1 and less and less into the 90%. My mother is terrified
    to change anything on her desktop, but my little sister has thought
    themes were the coolest thing on earth since she first found out about
    them at the age of 7. In other words, old people are scared of choice
    and young people who have grown up with computers embrace choice. We
    should be planning for that next generation of users, not for the
    current one.
A semi-related note: My friend was working on a company doing
linux-based customized web/file/mail/whatever server stuff. They all
decided to switch to NT on their desktop machines and just SSH in to the
development machines, since everyone was just tweaking their desktops
all day.

My own experience is you want to have a pretty desktop, but at some
point you just want things to work without too much tweaking so you can
concentrate on the real stuff you want to do with the computer. I know
"linux tweaking" is a popular hobby and rather fun too, but heck, "Use
GNOME so you can customize your desktop look and feel all day" is not
what I want Gnome to be. I want to use it for doing stuff.. *ahem* and
*cough* yea, I know I do themes and stuff for living but erm.. I hope
you get the idea.. 8-)
     
    > Your rant above is an example of the classical Unix/free-software
    > attitude that tends to end up with that result (the idea that lots of
    > preferences == easy to use).

I agree with this. There were a few very vocal people on #galeon after
Marco removed some of the really silly preferences, one issue was "but I
want to have right click on the web page to go back!" which is NOT what
you expect really. Another one people flamed about a lot was to
customize the modifier keys (alt, shift, etc) used with the mouse scroll
wheel. Some people want to use [yourfavouritemodifier]-ScrollWheel to
walk through the page history (back/forward).

Where I know the right-click-to-go-back is probablt very handy and fast
for a user who has learned to love it, it is just something you dont
want to have on prefernces for all to play with.

Same with the scroll wheel stuff. Just have the history-walk bound to
*some* modifier, and just learn it once. You dont even have to get
frustrated at your friend if you borrow his/her galeon sometime :-)
    
    I do not claim, anywhere, that more preferences == easy to use. However,
    they can bear no additional usability cost if well structured and
    well-hidden from the beginning user who is unprepared to deal with the
    complexity.

Yep. One can have stuff hidden in gconf, at least I think so. The
CrackPipe app could then have plugins or something simple like that
where you can submit those hidden-stuff lists and share them with your
friends if you want.
    
    Furthermore, I /do/ claim that more preferences (in the long term) ==
    better to use, and further, that those that claim that they know best
    about which set of simple preferences are best are often at best wrong
    and at worst extremely arrogant in their choices.

I remember being had my butt flamed by Maciej about the importance of
user testing. I know it now. The best defaults are often the ones what
most people expect the application to do.

Of course there is a even deeper problem, one should design the whole
application from this perspective. Concentrate on a task, and first plan
and do some testing on how to accomplish the tasks most easily and
efficiently.

iMovie for mac is one of the most brilliant apps I have ever seen, and
it is very task centric. It lets you edit your own digital video, and it
is so easy you just sit on front of it and it just makes sense. Still it
is not any way limiting. For real pro's there are other tools, but a
talented person can do awesome stuff with it.

Yours gently,

Tuomas

-- 
:: :: Tuomas Kuosmanen  :: Art Director, Ximian :: ::
:: :: tigert ximian com :: www.ximian.com       :: ::