Re: [Usability] Some usability feedback

[Kalle Vahlman <kalle vahlman gmail com>]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 13:33:38 +0100, Maurizio Colucci
<seguso forever tin it> wrote:
> - He was annoyed by the difficulty of searching a folder (he has some
> very long folders). He saw the gnome-search-tool in the menu, but he did
> not like to have to locate the folder in the file-selection dialog,
> since he was already viewing the folder in nautilus. He suggested to add
> a "search this folder" option in the right-button menu of nautilus. He
> also suggested a quick-search box to quickly find things in long
> folders, like in thunderbird (which he uses). He discovered nautilus
> scrolls when you press a letter, but this wasn't sufficient for him. (In
> Windows he uses the "advanced search tool".)

Too bad he didn't try to type more letters, as it would have worked
the same way...
(type "ab" and it will select "absint" instead of "bugger")

This is highly undiscoverable, of course. But this kind of things
usually are, and there are few or no smart ways to help that (how many
people read the gimp hints window before hitting ok for example?). The
real problem is that people don't want to be teached, they either want
the straight procedure ("press thingamagic and then ok and you are
done") or to discover it themselves. If you try to teach them (telling
things they don't know, and didn't ask for), they get angry. I run
into this every time my wife asks me "how do I [insert task here]".
Also, most people seem to have a blind spot when it comes to guiding
texts on the screen. I have (as the chief IT personnel of my
relatives) more than enough times been asked what to do, when the
answer I give is approximately word-to-word with the on-screen text.
So it's really hard to force a person to notice something on the
screen and doubly so to make that person to remember it twice.

I'll end my IT-support-is-a-bitch rant here. Sorry for that :)

> - He was puzzled by spatial nautilus, especially the fact that, when you
> double click a folder, the parent is not closed. He did not discover
> middle click. When I told him to just middle-click, he said he did not
> like to do it. "I hate clicking the wheel, I feel like I am breaking the
> mouse. Also, I don't see why the folders don't close automatically".

Well, windows will do that to you ];-) Seriously, it would take more
than a quick walk in the park to notice the benefits and disadvatages.

He's right about the middle clicking though. But then again, I never
use it either and am quite happy. I tend to feel that the folder jumps
around and get disorientated.

> - When I told him to activate nonspatial mode, he liked it a lot,
> because of the "history" side-panel, which I activated. He said the
> history side-panel is "better than windows". But he did not discover it
> by himself.

Ubuntu does make it hard, I think a "pure" GNOME install would have
the browse item in the Applications menu.

> - Initially, he could not locate his windows partitions. He complained
> there is no graphical representation of them. (But I suspect this is an
> ubuntu problem, since in fedora I recall the disk were there.)
> Furthermore, they were not mounted automatically, and I found no
> graphical tool to do that. I had to launch parted and edit fstab, which
> he didn't like.

I'm not sure what is the current status of the ntfs driver, but last I
looked at it was said to be pretty much roll of the dice between
writing and destroying your data. So I would assume that is the reason
they were not automounted. But I could be wrong, of course.
 
-- 
Kalle Vahlman, zuh iki fi