Usability

[Alistair Davidson]

joack at 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.

-- 
Lord [INSERT NAME HERE]
Rick's World: http://www.altgeek.org/lord_inh/comic/index.html