Re: Baobab

[intech <macosx gmail com>]

On 7/27/06, Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org> wrote:
> You are explaining *how* Baobab does what it does, not what the user goal is
> that we should be addressing.

I think you hit the problem, and it has to do with the way Baobab
currently presents itself to the user, but I don't think it would be
hard to change that presentation.

I think the problem is the discoverability of this tool is very poor.
I don't think the appropiate way to access it is from the Applications
menu. I think just a little bit of Nautilus integration.

The use case for the average user of this tool is that they are trying
to save space, and find what folder is taking up a lot of space. The
traditional approach, as previously mentioned, is to right click on
each folder and select properties, which is very time consuming, but
thats the best way the user is most likely going to think to do it,
because file management takes place in nautilus. If the context menu
had an option "Analyze Disk Usage" when you select one or more
folders, and then that automatically opened baobab and then
automatically scanned the folders, then it would make itself very
useful to users, as they would recognize they don't need to go to
properties for each folder.

I also think the UI needs a usability review.  The preferences dialog
seems very confusing, and I think the entire menu could be removed in
this tool as _everything_ is duplicated on the toolbar (except
preferences which I don't see a point to that dialog anyways)... Also,
if it integrates into nautilus as I mentioned, then maybe the
Filesystem/Folder/Network buttons could be removed as well... at the
very least, why do we need seperate buttons for Folder and Filesystem
when Filesystem is in the filechooser?

So, in summary, I think the thing to do is give it a good UI/usability
review and change the way the application is launched, and I think it
would make a great addition to the desktop.