Re: [Usability] User centered redesign of desktop preferences

[Maarten <m menheere gmx net>]

On Wed, 2005-02-23 at 14:10 +0100, Reinout van Schouwen wrote: 
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Maarten wrote:
> 
> > Hmm it does seem a bit much. You could divide the applet in the
> > following pieces:
> > -User pictures. (Different representations of you)
> > -Profiles  (Desktop customizations fitting user identity)
> 
> Should this also contain for instance the sound-juicer sound profile?

Well it could. It could be useful for lets say CCRMA to make a music
artist user profile. In this way themes could become really useful. A
sound-juicer profile could be a part of this if it would be useful to
the artists. The artist just has to select the theme and the desktop
would be configured to the users needs. You could do a lot of stuff like
place the right applications on the panel.

http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/introduction.html 

> > -Location. (regional specific settings)
> > -Communication (email/aim settings).
> 
> Sounds reasonable. For this to work, I would add "levels of disclosure" 
> like Orkut has, so you can specify that your e-mail address is visible 
> to the public but your IM only to friends and your postal address to 
> relatives. No, I don't know how this should be implemented in practice.
> 
> > This is how the computer dialog looks on my desktop (garnome 2.9.90):
> > http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/pictures/Computer.png
> 
> <translator hat>
> Shouldn't you be testing the Dutch translation? :-s
> </translator hat>

Yes I should shouldn't I :). I guess I will now :)

> > The contents has no relation to the concept "computer" from the users 
> > point of view.
> 
> > computer with the outside available here. It is more like the network
> > folder only then mixed with services available to the whole system. Or
> 
> OK, I see where you're coming from.
> Would the 'Outside' folder (this should be renamed to something better) 
> also replace the Network servers location in Nautilus, so that we get 
> something like a Network Neighbourhood on steroids?

What I like about this is that is easy to explain to users. If someone
has a network problem everything is present in a single easy to find
place. The added benefit would be that not every file sharing capability
ifolder, smb, nfs gets it's own control center menu item. I would
consider that a bit of a disaster really. 

You should not make a user interface from the technologies to the users
but from users needs to technologie. In this way you would get a sharing
dialog where you can select the technology afterward (if at all needed
it should be auto detected what the users capabilities are on the other
side)

I think it would be important that capabilities of a program that are
useful to the desktop as a whole are available for configuration in a
single place.

Example. I don't think you should lock-in smtp settings to evolution
because there could be more programs that want to make use of mail
sending capabilities. The information that makes all the network stuff
work is now sprinkled all over, some are in apps, some are in the
desktop, and some are in a level below that. In this way smtp would be
more a property of your internet link (like proxy settings) than some
obscure setting in a mail client somewhere. Exporting backups and
management could also become easier.

What I think is most important is that you don't mix things that are the
same object from a developers point of view but are not from a users
point of view. As how it is now in the computer folder. It is the
computer from a developers point of view. A developer can view the
computer from the inside, a user experiences the computer from the
outside. 

> > This is indeed a bit inconsistent. Only somehow I am not able to make 
> > screenshots of menus, making discussion on this stuff a bit difficult.
> 
> Tip of the day: Use gnome-panel-screenshot --delay.

Ahh ok, thanx for the tip. 

> regards,
>