Re: [Usability] Research paper on virtual desktops

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Michael Toomim wrote:

> Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 21:32:26 -0700
> From: Michael Toomim <toomim ocf berkeley edu>
> To: Usability gnome org
> Subject: [Usability] Research paper on virtual desktops
>
> I just saw this CHI paper on virtual desktops:

Interesting, our lecturer called it HCI (Human Computer Interaction) which
is less pronouncable but the word order implies that Human interacts with
computer rather than the other way around.  (not actually interesting if
you dont find linguistics and different uses of language interesting ;)

> http://www.stanford.edu/~merrie/papers/vmon.pdf
>
> I seem to remember Seth doing some sort of survey a while back on
> virtual desktop usage.  Maybe this is relevant?

Only two pages, nice and short worth reading.

The users surveyed are all people who use Virtual Desktops.  I would be
interested to know about people who dont use Virtual Desktops and what it
takes before a user makes the leap and uses multiple virtual desktops.
How do new users discover and start using virtual desktops?  Do they
wonder where all their windows just disappeared to?
After many years of using Apple Macintosh or Microsoft Windows I am not
inclined to learn to use virtual desktops.

I was interested by the comments about Two monitor setups.  I hope to try
that soon (I have two montiors, both equally crappy).  I have always
wanted to try it ever since I first saw an AVID Suite (Video post
production).

Sincerely

Alan Horkan
http://advogato.org/person/AlanHorkan/