joack@gmx.net wrote:
On 25 Jul 01, at 3:48, John Peter Tapsell wrote:
But again your users are just users - and I totally agree if that is the case. What I'm trying to say is that we should force the users into being more technical then users, and having to have some understanding of the underlying workings.
I'm one of them - more or less - just trying to make the transition. Lets face it, whats really stupid about that sun-study is that they used totally uninformed people. Nobody is going to use the gnome (or the K-desktop) w/o getting to know their system better then they ever needed or were able to know their old one. The testees werent told the first thing (not even that the gnome isnt an OS). I think you'd get what you want with an easy to use UI with easy to access info about the underlying structure. Its alot more fun if you 'discover' what youre using, isnt it? And if people are basically scared of the computer anyway youll only intimidate them the other way.
Believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of people aren't hackers. They don't care how their machine works. All they care about is whether it does work.
I quite like travelling by train. I don't want to be forced to learn about how the train works in order to use it- all I want to do is buy a ticket and get onto the train, then get off when I reach my destination.
Do you agree/disagree that if use the base assumption we want more technical users, then we can't abstract the UI too much, and we have to make the UI closely related to the inner workings?
But maybe make the inner workings 'visible', most non-hackers are more visual I think
I think I'd quite like an example of this. I'm not sure whether I agree with you or not on this point atm.