Henning Ludeke wrote: >> From a marketing point of view I agree with xl cheese: Bias the >> GUI towards > novice users. > > The discussion regarding upper levels - I think they'll all agree > we want to make Ubuntu a real alternative to Vista & Leopard. Thus > the GUI needs to be as easy to use, yet more innovative in some > ways as the same time.
Ease of use is not *quite* the same thing as a fairly comprehensive menu and gui system. The current kde (kubuntu) is coming close to having this in many ways. My target audience is the 'Friends or Family Members' (FOFMs) who are informal technical support and underpin, and influence, the huge world of fairly timid users of windows. For the ambitious user with confidence in their abilities, windows has a fairly comprehensive menuing system which may be intuitive, or sometimes not, but can usually be used to tell an uninformed user who is not too timid, how to do relatively complex things on a step by step basis. Timid users will get someone else to do it - a friend or family member (fofm). A sequence of menu and mouse click steps needs no computing knowledge, just a little systematic action, lack of timidity, and some instructions. Very nearly all Windows based retail items have this included. It is expected, even when it is not entirely necessary. Frequently the comfort of having the drivers CD, pdf user manual, and instructions sequence details is not sufficient because things do not actually work properly! Being able to cope with this situation is called having a 'lot of windows experience'. I think I had reached this stage before I came to linux. And was fed up with it - learning a lot but knowing nothing. As a windows escapee a few years ago I yearned for someone to tell me exactly what to key or menu to use (in linux) and then what to click on. The typical end of the windows user comfort zone is probably registry editing. Unless you know a lot more than the average user, it is scary, risky, and mostly avoided. Windows user will see this as a signal of microsoft failure if such editing is required. A bad OS is not seen as a failure(!) Lack of a menu and simple gui is seen as failure by these users. It does *not* have to be simple, just capable of a sequence for the user. If command line is essential (ideally not) then it is important that a clear set of instructions can be given, hopefully in common over many distros. However bad some windows things are designed, or however bad they are working, a windows user will expect to be directed to a particular menu and then told what to click on. These almost become like 'rituals', or incantations, used without any real understanding of underlying principles. Superstition will even begin to creep in with people not really knowing why things are going well or badly. -- alan cocks Kubuntu user#10391 -- ubuntu-art mailing list ubuntu-art@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
