Re: [Usability] Re: making the conceptual model more concrete

[Daniel Borgmann <spark-mailinglists web de>]

On Fri, 2003-07-04 at 15:40, David Adam Bordoley wrote:
> Media players are document centric. For instance a user opens a folder with 
> all their music in it. The most natural way to present this information to 
> the user is as a media player (ala rb). 

And when I listen to radio? Later you say that with documents, you mean
objects rather, so in this case I would see "the player" as the object
to work with (make it play funky tunes), not the music itself, which can
be everything from a document (audio file) to a CD or radio station. Am
I wrong? So if the actual media player is the object, would I go New ->
Funky Media Player to get it?


> A game could even fit it into this model nicely. Assuming you have a "New" 
> menu it could have an option for Game and popup a dialog allowing you to 
> choose which game (or possibly a submenu). You could than save that game to 
> a folder, and the next time you want to continue the game you simply open 
> the existing game from the folder you have saved it to. Alternatively you 
> could start a new game from the New menu of course. 

Ok, that makes sense. In a very twisted way though. ;)
I wonder if it's really easier to find saved games on your desktop than
to start the game of your choice and then load the state of your choice.


> > I believe that this would resemble reality much more closely, both "real
> > life" reality (we both work with documents and use devices in our lifes)
> > and computing reality (what people practically use their computers for).
> > Maybe I just completely misunderstood you. If the Applications menu
> > would indeed be replaced with a New menu, how would I open a game or
> > browse to a website? How would I check my dates on a calender? 
> 
> I answered some of these above. About the calendar, isn't the most natural 
> way to open your calendar to simplay open it. Shouldn't the calendar be a 
> desktop object. Similarly instead of a mail app, wouldn't a mail folder on 
> the desktop be much more intuitive? [2] 
[..]
> I think this is just a terminology difference. When I say document, I mean 
> object, thing etc. It doesn't need to be an actual document, see above, a 
> game and folder etc these are all documents (objects). 

Objects sound good to me. Because it would be pretty close to what I'm
thinking. If the calender can be an object, why not the media player
(radio?) or web browser? I find this a much more natural way to think
about these kind of applications than to try and map absolutely
arbitrary data (web content or music), which can even change and
transform on the go, to objects. 
The next question would be, how would those "non-document objects" be
handled? Should they constantly run and stay in memory or only if you
click them? Should they be represented by files while they are not
running? How could this all work and if they are permanent objects on my
desktop, how could I "put them aside" when I don't need them at the
moment and how would my computer deal with all the stuff on my desktop
when I can't "quit" them to free the memory? I really like the general
idea though.

Daniel