Re: [Usability]HIG compatability for grubconf

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

On Mon, 2003-02-17 at 07:59, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 17, 2003 at 01:14:34AM -0500, Joseph Monti wrote:
> > 
> > I am the project manager for Grubconf, a Gnome2 based GRUB configuration
> > utility. We are to the point where we would like to focus on usability
> > and compliance with the Gnome HIG. I've read the HIG, but this is my
> > first Gnome app and I may not have gotten it right.
> > 
> > Would you mind taking a look at our app and providing a few pointers?

The most obvious detail thing that jumps out at me is spacing and
padding. Search the HIG table-of-contents for "spacing". There should be
two sections on it (confusingly enough)... The alerts section is more
detailed, but not quite what you are designing, however its worth
reading because most of the values given for alerts apply to dialogues
too. The other section describes spacing for dialogues like yours.

> 
> It helps a lot to start on a higher level - the book I'm recommending
> this month is "designing from both sides of the screen" because it has
> a whole practical process for that.
> 
> Basically:
> 
>  - identify your target users in specific detail

Describe an imaginary person who "exemplifies" the sort of people you
want to be using this tool. For you this might mean answering questions
like, "Who wants to change boot time settings?", "Why do they want to
change boot time settings?", "How much knowledge of the bootup process
do they have?", "How much Linux familiarity do they have?", etc.

>  - list the reasons they want to use your app
>  - sort those by things everyone will do often, everyone will do once
>    or twice, some people will do often, some people will do once or 
>    twice
>  - organize the GUI prioritizing things by those categories

Write down your descriptions of what people will be using the interface
for "in plain english". This is a good technique for figuring out where
your operations are depending on implicit knowledge you have that the
people using your tool will not have.

So for example... don't think "Point the root partition to a new device"
think "Set the computer to start up in a new operating system". This
will be a particularly difficult task for a tool like "Grubconf" which
is working in a traditionally techno-fiddly-geeky area... The balance
between precise language and language that your users will understand is
very tricky, but I would start by siding on being understood :-)

-Seth