Re: [Fwd: Re: [Usability]List policy, usability leadership, mission statement [Was: "widget"]]

[Christopher Warner <zanee kernelcode com>]

On Wednesday, July 31, 2002, at 09:39 PM, Havoc Pennington wrote:

> Nils Pedersen <n p sun com> writes:
> > Now I'm not really sure what 5% of the desktop market Havoc was
> > talking about, so this is where things get hypothetical...
>
> I suppose this is off-topic, but just to toss out an opinion, I think
> it's a 5% where:
>
>  a) they are real desktop users - i.e. usability and desktop features
>     are relevant to them - i.e. not techie/workstation users; otherwise
>     you're "cheating" and not really making progress.
>
>  b) they don't need third-party native GUI ISV apps, just some
>     web-based apps or Java stuff, plus the things we can already offer
>     such as Mozilla, office apps, Evolution. (but they probably need
>     to work in a mostly-Windows company.)
>
>  c) they have a system administrator managing their desktop machine
>     for them
>
> Very hypothetical, though, indeed.
>
> Havoc
>
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> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
I used to be the system administrator for the 2nd largest advertising 
agency in the world with many employees around the world; close to 
20,000 or so desktops, servers the whole 9 yds.

What I found was that most of the users aren't as stupid as people make 
them seem. They might not understand something but they are usually 
quick to pick up on a methodology; some of them are slower than others. 
I agree with A.. as well as B and I'm really happy B has been addressed 
for the most part with opensource software.

I disagree with C; it's just not a feasible idea. In a small company 
yes; however 10 people or so gets a little bit sticky to just take care 
of there desktops for them, especially with Windows. There are ideas 
I've shot to this list over a couple of years regarding what I feel is 
the importance of allowing the user to handle simple things they can 
handle already on a windows system; ways to make things easier for the 
system administrator that haven't been incorporated into gnome but have 
been incorporated into OS X. The Menu System, the movement of data 
between programs etc etc have all been addressed in OS X infact if I 
find the stuff that I rambled about I'll send links it almost as if 
apple ripped it, I'm sure they didn't but anyway these are just tiny 
things that I think gnome misses shooting for some other goal. It's the 
tiny details that gnome misses in usability.

-Christopher Warner