[Usability] Who our users are (was: Future of the menu top bar?)

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

--- Dan Winship <danw novell com> wrote:

> Unfortunately, it's a question with no answer, since
> we refuse to define
> who Gnome's users are. :-/

This business of needing to know who our users are --
or rather who our targetted users are -- keeps coming
up.
But why?
We have in front of us an OS that's used by a massive
majority of the population. Everybody uses Windows
(irrespective of how we feel about that).

Or take OS X: it's widely acknowledged as having good
usability. Yet it's used by grandmothers, and
programmers alike.
I'm not sure that this is a question that should apply
to an OS. (Ok, gnome isn't an OS, but you get what I
mean.)

It's only when you get to the application level that
it starts to become an interesting and worthwhile
question.
For example, iPhoto: my grandmother might use that to
manage her digital photos, but a professional
photographer managing a portfolio would use something else.


		
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