Re: [Usability] Usability Digest, Vol 55, Issue 5

[Jacob Beauregard <deadowlsurvivor gmail com>]

> Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:32:52 +0000
> From: Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Prototyping the next generation panel
> To: allanpday gmail com
> Cc: Usability Mailing List <usability gnome org>
> Message-ID: <23D7D39F-855D-468D-B8E4-CE52B3C07E4D Sun COM>
> Content-Type: text/plain; delsp=yes; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII
>
>
> 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.
>   
Doing a complex prototype kind of destroys the purpose of prototyping. 
Prototyping one aspect of the whole thing piece by piece would be a 
better idea if its more feasible, which it generally is.
> 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.  As such, it hopefully shouldn't be  
> too hard to break down the desktop functionality into a manageable  
> number of goals and tasks, on which we can focus during any initial  
> prototyping activities.
>   
Best point
> (By goals I mean things like "email a photo to your parents", and by  
> tasks, the implementation-agnostic steps required: "connect your  
> camera to your computer", "find the right photo", "attach it to a new  
> email", "add a comment", "send the email to your parents".)
>
> Obviously some of these goals and tasks will have a wider scope than  
> *just* the desktop/panel/wm-- and that's no bad thing, because it  
> means we can re-use them when we're prototyping other parts of the  
> desktop experience.  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.)
>
> 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.
>   
The biggest problem that's going to occur is that most people have an 
extremely strong preconceived notion of how a desktop should behave, and 
while you want to have representation this group, it can't be the only 
group that's represented if you really want to improve the desktop 
experience.

The problem with this is that people almost always default to what has 
been suggested as a model, and the current desktop model has likely been 
suggested to them every day for however long they have owned a computer. 
Fortunately, I recently discovered a clever solution to this. You could 
weed a lot of these people out by building a survey with a very 
open-ended question that suggests an answer. Then you can see who 
responds with the suggested answer.

Example survey question where the results were usually echoed from the 
suggestion, however with exceptions:
--------------
What interests you in the field of Computer Science? Why?
(Ex. Do you enjoy creating things? Do you enjoy knowing how stuff works?)
--------------

Then you can find the people that don't simply echo, and at the same 
time you can also represent the people that do echo, it's just easier to 
find the other people that don't echo way.

> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>
>