Re: Template system

[Rudd-O DragonFear <rudd-o veronica amauta>]

El mié, 17-12-2003 a las 17:16, Mark Roach escribió:
> On Wed, 2003-12-17 at 16:16, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote:
> 
> In my mind, a person thinks "I need to write a letter" so they open the
> "letter-writing app" and write a letter, then they think "I need to save
> this for later" so they save it (picking a location in the process).

Yes.  This is a learned model, one that hinders usability.  Ideally, the
user should want to "write a letter", then think "let's make a letter
out of a template for letters". 

I completely agree with you that 95% of users think of a "letter-writing
app".  The templates thing is exactly what the doctor ordered for this
wrong, learned with Windows 3.1, mentality.

>  The
> document-centric way seems the reverse of this, i.e. "Let me find a
> location in which I will create a file, which will contain a letter
> which I will write."
> 
> Like I say, I'm not doubting anyone, but this seems counter-intuitive to
> me, and apparently, as you say, hasn't been the way that people actually
> do things even though that option is available to them. So maybe it just
> hasn't been implemented properly in the past, I don't know. I'm just a
> curious lurker, so if anyone has a study that can enlighten me, I would
> be very interested.

No studies =(  that I know of.  Supposedly back in '94, Microsoft
invested millions and determined this was the way to go, hence the
New... menu and the Templates directory, while hiding the applications
on a Start submenu.