Re: [Usability] Overthinking things.

[Thorsten Wilms <t_w_ freenet de>]

On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 11:19 +0000, kerberos piestar net wrote:

> What to recommend, I don't really know. I suppose I think the issues  
> are much more fundamental than other people do, almost to necessitate  
> a 'usability audit' rather than moving on to user testing.

You're not alone in this specific regard ;)


My worry is that most user testing and even expert reviews end up
targeting details of already existing software. That sets very rigid
limits to the possible level of improvement.

But what about the big picture and the most basic concepts?

I've seen users struggle with most basic file management. Some don't
understand folders and nesting. To really understand saving and loading
you need to understand the nature of RAM and hard drives. Attention
should be payed to the specific knowledge required to handle all kinds
of tasks in a confident way. Maybe it can be reduced by using different
approaches or there might be a way to put knowledge into the software?


BTW, I hope gnome-shell won't be made default before showing in user
testing that it is an improvement over what we have now (it's disruptive
nature of changing pretty much the whole screen worries me).


-- 
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/