Hi Karoliina, While it might be good to take netbooks and other devices in mind, I think that designing a UI that is skewed towards that format is less than useful.
Perhaps a "netbook remix" of GNOME would be better. Regarding that though, I thought that I'd mention that the Eee that I bought had the Xandros interface. I immediately switched it to the full KDE desktop while researching other options. I finally installed Ubuntu and Fluxbox. GNOME couldn't manage the windows as well. Regarding netbook remixes such as Ubuntu's. I find them confusing. I need to spend too much time figuring out what an icon stands for or just ignore them and read the text. When setting up netbooks for other people (including three proverbial "old ladies") I found that they too were boggled by the big icons and panels and so set up Fluxbox for them. The right click menu made immediate sense to them as I had set up the menu with the applications they most used and it was available wherever their cursor was, and had set apps to open in named workspaces such as "web", "writing", "music" and so on. Kirk, Your .odp presentation was interesting. Anzan Hoshin http://wwzc.org 2009/10/2 Kirk Bridger <[email protected]> > The definition of "Usability" and how it can be evaluated is an > interesting topic. I'm presenting my thoughts on it (and a little more) at > BAWorld Vancouver at the end of October. > > Here's [1] a link to my presentation as it provides a lot more details than > this email does. It's best reviewed in slideshow mode as I have overlapping > text without animations. > > Basically though I think the problem here is that we don't have a clear > definition of who our users are. There's tribal knowledge for some that are > involved, but I don't believe there's any actual consensus. I think this > is part of the root of the problem that Shuttleworth mentioned in his recent > presentation - Open Source struggles with usability in a different way than > proprietary. Typically OSS projects have very specific users in mind during > design, and then the results are used by a lot of people that were > originally "out of scope" or who were not the target audience. > > I think Gnome Shell has the potential to experience this problem very > severely and believe we should be doing early usability testing and analysis > - well, too late for early, but we should get started on it asap. > > Gnome 3 should have a very broad audience, for obvious reasons. But that > doesn't mean we should design for everyone, as then you run into the > "elastic user" problem. > > Do we have a clear definition of Gnome 3's (or even Gnome Shell's) users, > tasks, and context of use? The recent discussion on touch interfaces, > notebooks etc falls into context I believe. > > As for design concepts - I think Schneiderman's 8 Golden Rules are a nice, > manageable set (which is different than heuristics). I find them more > applicable and concrete than Nielsen's list (which he created for web sites > I believe) - I give quite a few examples in the presentation. > > I'll reply to Brian Cameron's recent post on list, but I wanted to share my > thoughts and presentation on this thread too, as the topic is a very > interesting one for discussion. > > If anyone has comments or questions about my presentation, I'd be happy to > respond to them on or off list > > Kirk > [email protected] > > [1] > http://thebside.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Kirk-Bridger-Eliminating-The-Odd-submitted.odp > > > > > > Rick Spencer wrote: > > I agree with Stormy. It's not an "either/or" discussion. New users and > frequent users should both like the system. > > Probably the easiest way to get a list of what usability is "about", is to > start with Jakob Nielsen's list of heuristics for his heuristic review > method. This stuff has stood the test of time. > > The "power user" heuristic is: > Flexibility and efficiency of use - > Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the > interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both > inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions. > > wikipedia has a good write > up:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation > > --- On Thu, 10/1/09, Stormy Peters <[email protected]> <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > From: Stormy Peters <[email protected]> <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Usability] Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3 > To: "Karoliina Salminen" <[email protected]> > <[email protected]> > Cc: "Anzan Hoshin Roshi" <[email protected]> > <[email protected]>, [email protected] > Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7:39 AM > Usability is not just about making > things easy for novice users. It's about making an > intuitive interface for people - all people. > My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise > in the trade offs between the types of users. > Stormy > On Sep 30, 2009 11:36 PM, > "Karoliina Salminen" <[email protected]> > <[email protected]> > wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM, > Anzan Hoshin Roshi<[email protected]> <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hello, > > ...Hi, > > > Can you explain how is this power user feature is related > to usability? > > You apparently are not a representative of normal users at > all. > > Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click > configurable > > this and that, > > they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface > they can click, pan, > > maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it > appeared > > originally already > > on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be > sincere. > > > > It is a good idea to support power user features, but > design should never be > > built around the power user features because that is not > usability for > > normal users, > > that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe > 0.01% of the users. > > > > Best Regards, > > Karoliina Salminen > > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing [email protected]http://ma... > > -----Inline Attachment Follows----- > > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing > [email protected]http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability > > > _______________________________________________ > Usability mailing > [email protected]http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability > >
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