Re: [Usability] Prototyping the next generation panel

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Response inline:

On Wed, 2008-11-05 at 14:32 +0000, Calum Benson wrote:
> On 4 Nov 2008, at 10:01, Allan Day wrote:
> 
> > Been thinking about this some more...
> >
> >> I'd certainly support prototyping this stuff sooner rather than later
> >> as well--
> >
> > One problem with these designs is their scope. We're not talking about
> > individual apps, here. We're talking about the whole desktop. How do  
> > you
> > prototype that?!
> 
> Nobody said it would be easy :)  Microsoft and Apple have teams of  
> dozens spending fortunes on doing this sort of stuff all the time, and  
> they still manage to get it pretty wrong sometimes.

The idea of finding ways of producing valuable research data without
those kinds of resources is an exciting one. I'm pretty sure it can be
done. Besides, challenges are good things. ;)

> You say we're talking about the "whole desktop", but really that's  
> only true in a visual sense.  Most of us spend far more time working  
> in individual applications than interacting with "the desktop", which  
> is primarily just a tool to help us organise and prioritise what we're  
> doing in those other applications.  

Sure, it's not the 'whole desktop'. I guess one of the things I was
thinking about was that, since what is involved are basic desktop
operations - launching apps, managing windows, etc, it could be
difficult to capture substantive data. Setting prototyping tasks around
window management could be tricky, for example.

> While we're concentrating on just the desktop/ 
> panel, though, to some extent we can treat the inputs and outputs to  
> the non-desktop/panel tasks as clouds where 'the right thing  
> happens'.  (Although in some cases, it may certainly be interesting to  
> ask users what they think 'the right thing' should be.)

I get you. Still, it would be a shame to completely ignore the
relationship between applications and DE operations...

> To identify these goals and tasks, we ideally want some of that user  
> research done-- that should also help us document some actual user  
> requirements, without which it's going to be pretty hard to design  
> anything useful anyway.

Ah, well, that's something where I feel I can definitely help. :) Who
wants to talk research design?!

Allan