Re: [Usability] user levels, etc.

[Luis Villa <louie ximian com>]

On Mon, 2001-11-12 at 19:31, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Luis Villa">
> 
> > One person or any small team dictating that 'I know what is best for all
> > of you' is /not/ a good compromise
> 
> You will generally hear the usability people (often the only people talking
> about removal of crack preferences, other than Havoc) talk about "user
> testing".

User testing suffers from strong systematic biases. The main ones are
twofold:

It has a selection bias towards the uneducated and inexperienced (the
educated and experienced have better things to do than sit and play with
boxes while being watched.) This means that what user testing measures
is not 'what is best for users' but 'what is best for the users who
spend less time in front of the computer and are generally clueless.' We
should work on making GNOME easier to use for these people- but we
shouldn't assume that because they show up for user testing that they
are the complete universe of computer users.

[And please don't take the comments about education the wrong way;
anyone who has tried to do political polling will tell you the exact
same thing.]

User testing also prioritizes short term UI issues over long term UI
issues. Not to harp on this example, but... everyone I know who has
tried using ~/ as their desktop has found it vastly superior (from a
utility perspective) and stuck with it. User testing won't reflect that.
It'll reflect that when given 30 seconds to find something in the
configuration screen, the additional option of using ~/ instead of
~/Desktop clutters things up.
 
Because user testing is biased towards these things, it is not and
cannot be the end all and be all of UI design. A strong notion of common
sense has to be injected, and many of the things we're talking about
here don't pass that second test.

> > especially when the rule of thumb is to err on the side of simplicity and
> > not on the side of choice.
> 
> Brand me a pinko, but I will gladly throw away the crack preferences that I
> use to make a simpler GNOME, capable of reaching a wider audience. [1]

I'm not at all opposed to making GNOME easier to use for the masses.
C'mon... I work for Ximian. If we[2] don't make GNOME easier for the
masses, I'll have to find a real job :)

That said... our core users- the ones who make GNOME go- are /hackers/.
I believe very strongly that if GNOME is not hacker friendly they won't
hack for us. And if they don't hack for us we're in deep trouble. 

More importantly, and this brings us back to where I started, I don't
think we have to make a choice about being people-friendly and being
hacker-friendly. It's a false dichotomy; it's the lazy way out. There
are very compelling reasons to work past that and allow both camps to
coexist, and so we should.
Luis

> [1] I can't wait for the "usability is communism" argument. It will be
> hilarious for the Australian/European participants anyway.

The topic in my home lug's channel at the moment (total coincidence,
long story) is 'marx, engels, lenin, luis'. So... it may come up but I
won't be the one starting it.

[2]In this sense, I mean we, the greater GNOME community, because we
[Ximian] can only do so much by ourselves. We're all in the usability
boat together.