Clear and rational thanks. Can you do the same for the ³no email client for home users² decision? Richard
On 05/10/2010 11:33, "Nadyne Richmond" <[email protected]> wrote: > Before I begin, I'll be explicit and state that I am a Microsoft employee > who works on Outlook:Mac. You'll see it in my signature, and of course > there's my @microsoft.com email address, but I'll start off with that to > ensure that it's clear. > > On 10/4/10 8:48 PM, "Mark Falchook" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >How does MSFT determine what percentage of users make use of a particular >> >feature? Please explain to me why anyone would want to waste time and >> >workflow having to logout and back in again with a different account when >> >they can simply switch identities? My wife and I use this feature >> >constantly. > > In Office:Mac 2008, you have the opportunity to anonymously send us usage > data about your applications. This is completely anonymous, and isn't > about everything in the application. You're asked about this at > installation time, and you can change your mind later by changing it in > the Preferences for any Office app. (In Outlook, it's Preferences -> > Feedback, and something similar in Office:Mac 2008.) > > Aside from this anonymous data, we have multiple other methods of > determining usage of a particular feature. For example, we often conduct > surveys of large swaths of our user population, and can explicitly ask if > a specific feature is used. That's in addition to usability studies, > focus groups, and other methods that we have of collecting data from our > users about how they use our applications. > > In the particular case of identities, the usage of them is extremely low. > They were originally intended as a solution for allowing multiple users to > share a computer, before Macs had multiple user accounts and the ability > to quickly switch between those user accounts. With the introduction of > fast user switching, it's much easier to give everyone their own account > and leave Outlook or Entourage running in that account. Then you just > click on the icon in the menu bar, switch between the user accounts, and > everything's right there waiting. It is a much better solution for > multiple users sharing one computer than our piecemeal solution of > allowing switching of identities. Furthermore, Apple strongly encourages > developers to not do things like this and instead rely on multiple user > accounts, so we're following Apple's recommendations in this regard. > > Personally, my husband and I also have a shared Mac at home, and we use > fast user switching. We have a single shared account (the username is > "Tipsy", which is our cat) for things that we share (like Netflix), and > then we have our own accounts for our individual stuff (mail, Quicken, > etc). It's not about hiding stuff from each other (we both have > read/write access to each other's directories, so he could go read my > personal mail if he were that bored), but rather conceptually knowing > where my stuff is and where his stuff is. We used to just keep everything > together in that single shared Tipsy account, but it was more of a hassle > to have to figure out that I was looking at his Quicken data instead of > mine and have to go and switch. > > Furthermore, while some folks have come up with other ways to use > identities, the ability to switch between them has caused lots of > problems. Plenty of folks will just explore and poke around to see what > they can do. We've had support calls where a user accidentally created a > new identity and couldn't figure out where their old stuff was. For the > vast majority of users, multiple identities is a power-user feature, and > being able to access it causes more problems than it solves for the power > users. So we've put it in a location where the power users can still find > it, and we've removed that problem for regular users. > > Regards, > Nadyne Richmond. > > Nadyne Richmond | user experience researcher > Microsoft Corporation | Macintosh Business Unit > [email protected] | +1(650) 693-1640 > http://www.nadynerichmond.com/blog/ > > > > > -- > YouTalk mailing list > List information: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/support_options/list.html > List moderator: [email protected], [email protected] > To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe -- YouTalk mailing list List information: http://www.entourage.mvps.org/support_options/list.html List moderator: [email protected], [email protected] To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
