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.
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 agree with everyones points about abstracting etc for lusers, but we shouldn't aim to cater for them, instead aim for the more techinical user - the ones that will be interested in knowing how to fix simple problems by themselves, and not be afraid to use a terminal.
That could be a problem and I dont think its got to much to do with the colour (black). I think, though, that bug-reporting and its import could be made more obvious.
Um, aren't children generally a lot better at this then adults? :)
I know a hacker who lets, if possible, his mother test everything he writes. She finds the most obvious bugs, which usually are those he never finds ;o)
greets Joachim