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GNOME Usability Study Report
pdiaz writes: "Here is a report made by Sun Microsystems people about GNOME usability. They collected a bunch of professionals (lawyers, engineers, Graphic Designers, etc..) and put them in front of a Gnome desktop. They were asked to perform some tasks and tell what some icons, menus, etc., do. Some quotes are really funny, like when they asked what does the terminal emulator icon launch." Very interesting stuff, and this approach is necessary because once you've gotten accustomed to the system it's no longer possible for you to evaluate how it appears to an inexperienced user.
I tried KDE, liked it at first, started disliking it, then decided to go with Gnome. I think this study would have been much more interesting if they'd compared usability between KDE and Gnome.
I don't think that statement reveals a negative attitude.
The question puts light on what I see as a major problem in computing, which is 80% of users are, forever, going to remain almost totally clueless.
I know Sun doesn't see a danger in the GPL because they think of themselves of a hardware vendor and software isn't as important to them and is not a money-maker for them. Still, I think it is unwise for them to back a desktop environment on which it is impossible to make money (because of the GPL). After all, Sun is a business and not a charity!
To be honest, I wish they'd work on developing CDE instead. I like CDE much better than Gnome or KDE (for technical and usability reasons, not licensing) and hope they continue to work on it.
IIRC, in one of the (now classic) books on the rise of Microsoft (either "The Microsoft Way" or "Microsoft Secrets"), they mention that during the UI design of Win95, once Micros~1 went to a software store and bought a single copy of each application (it took them three trucks to ship). This set of applications was used by dozens of people under surveillance and then the recordings were examined to find (and therefore avoid) rough edges in UI's.
I love to flame against M$ on lots of things, but usability is not on the list. Having the complete chaos between interfaces in X (and I am an fvwm2 user, so this is confusion below the level of KDE or GNOME) is intimidating for anyone without a few years of X Windows experience.
OTOH Micros~1 loves to stick to basically the same UI everywhere, which is a pain. Take WinCE for example; that UI definitely does not scale to under 800x600, but Micros~1 still does not realize that.
I have said this before and I'll say this again:
POSIX is a major usability nightmare. Listing devices in a directory is fine, but calling that "/dev" is not. I know what "/proc" is, but why is it abbreviated? Why do I have to know what it is? Why did I have to RTFM to figure it out? This goes for all standard directory names, including "/" itself. Why can't root directory be called "root directory" or even "My Computer"? And don't tell me about aliases. Those don't hide information from a sufficiently inquisitive but clueless user. It must be IMPOSSIBLE to ever see "/dev" or else some user somewhere will get confused. And no, hiding key partitions isn't the answer either because most users prefer to run as root. I do this even though I occasionally do stupid things and have to reinstall EVERYTHING. Still I find it comforting to know I can screw up my system, I am god on my computer, I have no limits. Most Windows users expect this feeling. I have been Windows-free for a few years now, but I still expect complete control at all times. Screw security, gimme control. No system will be good until it assumes a user runs as root all the time with no other mode available.
To sum up then, everything exposed to the user must be bullet-proof and GUI is just the tip of the iceberg. The computer must be like a parent: always guessing what the user is up to, seeing a few steps ahead, figuring out what bad things could happen and preventing them transparently, while hand-holding the user with hatever he wants to do. CLI or GUI!
Instead of being irate about people who can't understand everything as fast as you (or did you understand it all that quickly?), think about what they said. One complaint often made about Microsoft Windows was how confusing it was to find the settings you wanted, and how many places you could make the same change. Microsoft has listened to people and improved their interface. Windows 2000 is much easier to configure than Windows 95, because related settings are grouped together. I am not a Windows fan, but I think we can learn a lesson here. We do need a unified architecture for overall settings on both KDE and Gnome. Icons can be confusing, and tailoring them to make it easier for people to understand is not a BAD thing to do. If we want non Unix/Linux types to use our system, we have to at least try talking to them in terms they understand, instead of calling them stupid.
To drag out an overused quote: "The only intuitive interface is the nipple..."
Seriously, there are no natural interfaces, merely familiar ones. Also, the easiest interface to learn isn't usually the most productive interface for an experienced user. When those goals conflict, designers should choose the productive interface over the easier one, since users will spend a lot less time learning the interface than they will spend using it.
> I think you'd have to agree that a button labeled "start" or "run" makes a lot more sense than a foot
I suppose that makes sense pressing that "START" button to shut the machine down? Brilliant.
Some quotes are really funny, like when they asked what does the terminal emulator icon launch."
It is exactly that attitude that makes Gnome unusable to the average PC user. Until that changes, Linux won't make inroads. Taco has already addressed this though. MS spends lots of money doing this kind of thing. The best we have done so far is a cheap rip off of that. We constantly rip on MS for bad software, yet when push comes to shove, we're just trying to give away free versions that look like theirs. It isn't working. This is an important first step in usability testing for Gnome. KDE would be wise to do the same, though they are probably about a decade (maybe a little less) ahead of Gnome in usability. Gnome could/can catch up by doing things like this. KDE can't remain idle, and MS won't remain idle.
If these participants were used to using Windows, then of course everything is going to be a bit confusing for them. So some people were confused by the icons. So what exactly does this "e" with the line around it do? What's this big "W" for? (Those would be Internet Explorer and Word)
Wouldn't it make more sense to take people who weren't used to ANY interface? Of course, I suppose it would be hard to find these people. I guess we could enlist the help of some Quakers.
The way I see it, learning a new UI isn't much different from learning to drive a new car. Sure, it's not exactly the same. The gear shift might be on the steering wheel or inbetween the seats. The headlights might be next to the windshield wipers levers or on the console. The point is that people can figure that out if given a few minutes.
I use many different UIs, from Macs to Windows to KDE and Gnome with different window managers, etc. Each one took a bit of time to learn.
And why do people refuse to take time to learn, anyway? You have to learn how to drive a car, but people refuse to learn how to use their computers. Seriously, take 30 minutes and figure out the basics, and the rest will come in time.
-- Zack
i do use a scheme that has this changed, but it wasn't the default. flexibility is nice, but it's even better when things just work.
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it only solves the first issue, and that still depends on what theme you use. you can still logout with one click (or be presented with the 'do you wish to logout' dialog if you have confirmation on).
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Not all /. users hate macs. I have all my audio equipment hooked to a mac, and my laptop is a mac.
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way to provide a link, slick. even knowing it's name, i couldn't find it in an acceptable amount of time (less than 2 minutes), seeing as you gave no useful information.
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The problem is that almost nobody takes the time to think about what they're doing to decide if it's a good idea or not. Try navigating on a windows machine without a mouse; after a few minutes it's pretty easy. Try that with GNOME. Switch between apps and see if the keystrokes are consistent. see if the focus goes where you think it will in a complex form. most of the time, GNOME keyboard shortcuts are implemented as a complete afterthought, and it shows. If there's a GNOME standard for this, it's followed poorly.
Additionally, most of the original desktop themes are just plain useless. they're:
- pretty but useless -- how do you maximize one of those windows?
- geeky and useless -- okay, tell me where i click to minimize, maximize, close, or stick the windows.
- just plain dumb -- who the fuck knows how this works? i sure as hell don't, and I have better things to do than figuring it out.
And the scary thing is all these themes have 10k+ downloads, and it took me about a minute to find these examples. I'm sure if I really cared I found find much better examples of what I'm talking about.I just spent 15 minutes looking for a truly good theme somewhere without success. that's a tragedy. that will hurt linux's mainstream acceptance far more than the fact that cmdrtaco was too dumb to buy a supported scanner.
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For example, why does everybody copy the design that the 'window kill' button should be right next to 'maximize'? That's horrible design, put window kill on the left, maximize and minize on the right.
Why is it possible to click down on the 'K', move the mouse a few pixels up, release the mouse, and log yourself out. If you have a fast computer, and you use KDE, you've probably done this before.
GNOME allows an application to use the entire task tray, then when you have two applications, it uses half that size.... and it squeezes down. It's efficient use of space, but it's inconsistent and makes it harder to tell with a single glance what's running. KDE makes good use of the space without this annoying inconsistancy.
What the hell are these icons? Stop being cute, start being useful. If you're running KDE, hit the K menu now and tell me what the following icons mean 'quick browser', 'bookmarks', 'toys', 'system', 'preferences' (these last two are way too similar), multimedia or graphics. None of those icons gives you any intuitive notion of what you're about to launch.
Additionally, I doubt I'm the only one who has taken the less-used apps in the menu for each level, made a folder called 'sewer' and stuck them in there. Yes, we're all proud that there are lots of applications now. No, we don't use 90% of them, and having them in our menus just slows us down.
Things are improving, but it's still terribly ironic, the way copying Microsoft is referred to as innovation, yet when Microsoft copies, that's just plain wrong.
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Everything has context yes, but that doesn't mean that it can't be made to make more sense. "Terminal emulator program" means NOTHING to the "average" user, but "Shell" "Console" or "GNOME Prompt" would. They wouldn't make sense to someone who is completely clueless, but I know people who are clued as far as computers go, but are not advanced power users. If these people are the ones that GNOME is going after, they're going to have to start actually implementing some of these suggested changes.
Linux will probably NEVER get the drooling idiots, but do we want them? I think the goal would be the people who know enough to be pissed when Word crashes for the 80th time, or that know enough to know that MS Sucks, but not enough to leave it.
Damn /. effect!
:)
DCMonkey
Point-to-select mode isn't default either. If the user selects it while "menubar at top of screen" is selected, it could warn you that the two will be a pain to use together and offer to deselect the global menubar option. If you are using a WM that isn't that well GNOME-integrated, then it could be assumed you "know what you are doing"-TM and leave you to deal with it yourself.
DCMonkey
I detest point to type, so there is one data point. However having the active window not always be the top window is sometimes handy. WindowMaker can do this without point to type IIRC.
Point to type is annoying if you have a cluttered desk (and nudge your mouse to the wrong window), or want to flick the pointer out of the way when trying to read what is underneath. That old-style pointer-must-be-in-edit-box just takes the joke too far.
I can see it being useful if you are always entering stuff in multiple partially overlapping windows, but face it; how many people these days work that way? In software dev or graphics and design maybe, but for common office work? People I work around have a hard enough time being aware of which window is active when there is a modal dialog sitting in the middle of the screen!
DCMonkey
The Desktop devs (or maybe the distros) could learn a bit from the the Rox Filer project and Mac OS X Bundles (PDF) and such
DCMonkey
To use your example of a friends car: I once drove a friends car, and while there were places where that was an issue, one statnds out that wasn't: The turn signal wasn't a lever on the stearing column, it was a switch on the dash. Yet I used that switch 10 times before I realised that it wasn't a lever! Whoever designed that interface made a major change, yet it was completely transparent to the user.
Interfaces should be natural. It should be no problem to go from unix to windows to mac to cpm to OS/390 to... It is, and that is a problem
A large portion of computer users are quite serious -- they spend a large portion of their time using computers. It is reasonable for them to invest time into improving their performance and expanding their abilities. They don't need to learn how to move files around or whatever -- they've figured out all that -- but they need to learn how to be the true masters of their computer.
No one pays much attention to that step however. You are on your own -- some make the leap, some stumble. Not much effort is put into making this easier, though.
Yes, like a shortcut, MS's filesystem shortcuts get you someplace quicker, but half the time don't work. That's fine if they think shortcut is a better word there. But using it for hypertext links is stupid -- there is nothing except the link, there is no long path that a link is a shortcut to. It makes no sense, any metaphor that it implies is incorrect.
The whole point of usability is not to do anti-intuitive, anti-conventional things like that (no matter how small a detail the word might be). So I would hope that no one would adopt that term in an effort to match MS.
MS uses the term "shortcut" where everyone else in the world uses "link". Not just those lame "shortcuts" in the filesystem, but IE uses that term for HTML links. This is from usability testing? Yeah, right.
In FrontPage instead of having templates, like most HTML editors, FrontPage uses shared borders and themes, while "template" is used for something different. And it uses the term "web" where everyone else uses "site" -- the way they use "web" is simply stupid.
I can't recall any others at the moment, but everytime I use some MS product I notice these minor, strange namings. They often forgo convention to use their own odd words. They want to invent a lingo so everyone is confused when they try something new, just like these people were.
Trying to immitate that would be like using the Word .doc format for file saves -- it's hard enough just to import the crap, you can't expect to become the crap.
you mispelled it. Soil and plant studies would be agronomics.
I'm not sure "shell" would mean any more than "terminal emulator"....
This *is* what the users see when first presented with the program.
You've hit on the root cause of the problems with oversimplifying the problem of UI design.
What people see when they initially enocounter an interface is immaterial - I could call my terminal emulator icon "rxvt", "xterm", "terminal", "terminal emulator", "command line", "bash", "prompt", "command prompt", or "dos window", and it won't make a difference. Once a person learns what that button does, then they file that piece of information away and use it later.
The problem comes when you have different names for what's functionally the same thing all over the place - if you have menu entries for "xterm", "eterm", "rxvt", "asterm" and "gnome-terminal", you're going to cause confusion.
People are pretty good at learning new interfaces. There might be initial confusion at how things work in the new interface, but that is *not* meant to be taken as critisim of the interface.
It's like putting someone in a standard that has only ever driven an automatic. He's going to be confused, and have a hard time with learning it, all the while cursing and bitching about it. But in a week or two, the use of the interface *should* have faded to the background, and let him get on with driving.
The problem with a UI is if it *doesn't* "fade to the background" and become passively usable that you have a bad UI. The initial reaction is going to be negative regardless of how good it is.
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Blah. Used <quote> instead of <blockquote>
Been spending too long on UBB.
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go look for olvwm
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I have nothing against making a UI intuitive for new users, but I'm also interested in making it useful for experienced users. Afterall, we are only beginners at something for a short amount of time. Once I become familiar with how something works, I'm more interested in being able to do what I want without too much pain. Drop down menus (or popup menus, like the "start" button) are easy to use, but tedious for the more experienced user when you have to search through 3 or 4 levels of submenus. Ditto for filemanagers. If I know the name of the program I want to run, Having to search through hundreds of icons for it is a lot slower that just typing it in at a command line (which I often do under *nix), especially when I can use tab completion.
So, while I often see studies like this where they test newbies, people don't actually become productive until they familiarize themselves with the environment. For that reason, I'd like to see a comparison / study of how productive more experienced users are with various UIs. I think that would be a more meaningful test.
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For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Are you kidding? The Apple Menu has been a thorn in their sides for ages. There are tons of people who have no idea that it's a menu at all, and why should they? It doesn't look like one, and there are other non-menu things that have been known to appear in that area. (e.g. clocks)
It could really use a word - and not just 'Apple Menu' neither, dammit.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Don't kid yourself. There's plenty of places where Windows has been improved over the years. But it's still pretty damn nasty.
Storing file type descriptions in the filename? Having menus that hide functions variably? Having scrollbar thumbs that barely stand out over the shafts? I could probably go on for ages about things MS needs to work on.
(OTOH, one of my favorite things they did were dragging items in the Start menu to customize it. It's not as good as it ought to be, but it's a great idea at the core.)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well the main reason I think it's so cool is that when people want to manipulate something - in this case a menu - it makes little sense to have to go someplace else entirely and shuffle things around in the file manager, and in folders, to have an effect.
Think about how rare it is for people other than actual typesetters to 'properly' use tabs instead of multiple spaces for indentation, or style sheets instead of setting styles inline by hand. As with many other things, users' natural instincts are to take direct action rather than relying on abstract connections between different parts of the UI. There's really nothing wrong with this; we ought to support it when we can.
Your point is well taken, though I wonder if you have the same problem when clicking on icons in the regular file manager. It is tricky for the computer to determine what it is you're trying to do, and this needs work, though we're probably doing reasonably well presently....
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Okay, clearly /. didn't like that too much. It's too difficult, and the comment was just for you, you'll figure it out dammit. I'm tired and want to go home!
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Well, the entire file structure of Unix is a gigantic piece of crap. (not that Windows is any better, or the Mac these days, though they've reorganized it several times, best in System 7)
But what I really was thinking about here was file name completion.... how do you have it set up? So that you have to hit a key to do it, or like a web browser where it does it automatically, but lets you continue typing over it. I'd favor the latter any day.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Looking at magic bytes is good, I'll agree, and ought to be one of the many methods used to determine and confirm file metadata. But it's not the only way, and it can't hold everything without conflicting with existing formats. (I'm also unsure if it would be faster to maintain a db of metadata or to have to read parts of every file to acquire the same information to be processed and presented to the user.)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Yeah, I know. I've been writing html professionally for several years, and been doing it ever since the days of the first Mosaic, when I decided that bookmark lists isolated on individual computers were kind of dumb.
;)
This was really caused by a convergence of a couple of factors: 1) I usually post in text mode and don't do html just to write 2) I was lazy and didn't preview. So I've learned something valuable - don't bother using html mode
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
While Cooper's heart is in the right place, and he is generally on top of things, I wasn't all that impressed with him. Only his firm support that computers should remember what the user tells them really stands out in my mind. (which has been around for a while, but always bears repeating since no one seems to be doing it!)
If you really want a good starting bibliography, read the one in the System 7-era "Apple Human Interface Guidelines." (which is available as a pdf on the Web) I'd add Tog's books, Raskin's book, all of Tufte's material, Brenda Laurel's...
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
This actually turns out to be an astoundingly bad idea. Basically, if there's one thing you really really need in a UI it's consistancy. Imagine driving down the road in a car with the gas and brake pedals reversed. You'd do okay for a couple blocks with some stops and starts, but the second a kid runs into the road, bam. Vehicular homicide.
This doesn't mean that there's anything inherently correct about the current system, just that you ought to have a damn good reason for change, and having changed, don't waffle.
When Alice changes from the lowest experience setting to the next one up, she'll have to relearn significant parts of the UI, and might as well be a novice. And this is going to happen again, the next time she ups it. By making people relearn these things all the time, you're really preventing them from forming useful habits and learning how the system can be used.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
It should be easier to tell people to click "shell" or "run shell" than to say "run the terminal emulator program".
Having tried both I greatly prefer hitting a keystroke to add characters.
However "My Documents" is a good indication that MicroSoft is not studying things much either. In fact "My Documents" is ON one of the disks. Removal of the C: drive will cause "My Documents" to become empty, which would be somewhat confusing to the user who can clearly see from that display that they are NOT on the C: drive!
It should initialize with the *actual* "My Documents" directory already opened and highlighted.
Unlike either Windows or Linux it would make sense for this directory to be immediately under the physical disk seperations.
Another idea would be to hide structure that cannot be changed without turning the machine off anyway. So the top level should be something like this:
/cdrom
/floppy
/My Documents
/Joe's Documents
/Sally's Documents
/The web
Of course both Windows and Unix make it very slow to get at the data, while fast to get at the less-important "filename". This is all backwards.
Please don't mess up the file system even more with "attributes", thank you.
Bullshit. This is exactly the type of "windows blinders" that people here are complaining about.
The average user does not want to "install" a program when they double click on it. They want to use the program! In fact the average user would be overjoyed if they could throw the program in the trash can if they don't like it and it is gone.
It is unbelievable that people complaining about the mysteries of Linux can blindly spout crap like "install" and think they are describing real non-computer-expert's thoughts.
Of course I should point out that Linux is as bad or worse than Windows with this "install" shit.
I have never seen a person who learns point-to-type (you can get this on Windows and NT by messing with the resource manager) switch back, and they quickly become frustrated when encouterint click-to-type. Where I work more than half the NT machines have been switched to point-to-type.
The fact is that point to type is, without question, superior. It is as close as possible to the ideal way to direct keyboard input to several objects using current hardware (the ideal would be to somehow read your mind or track your eye movements to see what thing you are thinking about).
The fact that this is not the default on all Unix systems (or on new versions of Windows, for that matter) is a good indication of how harmful the engraned user expectations are to advancing the design of machines.
Otherwise there is no reason for the beginning user to see a shell, I agree.
I still feel that "shell" is a much better word for people to see, and it means as much to a typical user as "terminal emulator" or other such verbage.
So I guess my complaint is that "My Documents" is shown by MSoft at the "root", rather than it's actual location. This defeats the whole advantage of forcing the physical disk structure to be part of the hierarchy: if a disk fails or changes it is clear what portion of the tree is affected.
I think a solution for MSoft would be to have the Explorer and file chooser start up with "My Documents" preselected, but in it's actual place in the hierarchy. It would look exactly as though you navigated down to it in the current one.
Of course as they have named the directories down there now, it makes the Unix directory naming look like a work of genius... Maybe they could fix it so it is not nested in so many levels. Perhaps C:/People/username (or /home/username ???)
That is nonsense. The design suggestions made were mostly right on the mark. I tried GNOME a while back and it is very poorly designed from a usability perspective. If you want to read about Microsoft's usability woes, search for the Interface Hall of Shame. Obviously, any system that you use for a longer period of time is one that you will be more familar with, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they should not be intutive. Reading this study convinced me that usability has (for the time being) low priority among the GNOME developers.
"Someone might be overwhelmed by the amount of options." (P7)
"There are too many features and icons for sombody new." (P7)
"Some things were accessible that an entry-level user would not want or need, but other things were buried deep." (P11)
"If someone showed me it would be okay, but if I was a new employee without help, I wouldn't get it." (P6)
While that is what we all do, it is what the useability experts are paid to figure out, not the test subjects. We all think we know what a new user would do but we don't, we have to watch them.
While their opinions and insights are great, some nice hard metrics (time to accomplish a task, clicks / keystrokes required, number of false selections, etc) are also great and leave the UI designer with some goals to shoot for. (In typical slashdot fashion I've not finished reading the study in question so that may very well indeed be in the study).
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Bleh!
I believe Slackware still ships it, but I could be wrong.
> If you don't know what post-modern rationalism is, do philosophers assume you are dumb?
Some of them will rip you to shreads for not having a basic understanding of philosophy, yes. People in every field don't understand how the general public can be so stupid as not to understand the basics of their subject.
> If you don't know Russian, do Russian professors mock you
Maybe not just Russian, but if you revealed you knew but one language, probably. You've never read people trashing Americans for being monolingugal before?
> Computer nerds are the last bastion of
> unadulterated bigotry
Yeah, whatever. Any discipline are going to have people who think themselves superior for knowing that discipline. English majors don't understand how people can be so poorly read; geography majors can't understand how people don't know where countries are. I complain about many of the customers at Homeland, as do most of my co-workers. Computer nerds are just human, doing what humans do.
Where's that blue-screen with that unreadable data I keep seeing when I use Photoshop in Windows all the time.... Hrm. GNOME must be broken.
Really, how can you argue with behavior-based experimental data that "this isn't how people behave"? Oh right - with unfounded 3l337 opinion.
I completely agree with this (see also my post in the "Why Linux will never be mainstream" comments). However, some of the recommended fixes made me sit up for a second.
As an example, the researchers recommended replacing "Halt" with "Suspend (Halt - stops the processor)"
IMHO, this is a bad idea. "Suspend" a) already has established meaning in the context of computers (go into power-save or sleep mode), and b) implies stopping something in the middle to return to it later (as in the phrase "suspended animation")
My personal recommendation would be something like "Shut down" or "Power off" (and if you can detect soft vs. hard power-switch, use an appropriate term in each case, e.g. "Turn off computer" vs. "Shut down the system").
The experimental data are pretty solid, but there's nothing gospel about the recommendations, except "Consult an experienced technical writer" -- preferably one who wrote docs for absolute novices and got direct feedback on it from them.
-- Old Man Kensey
OTOH, it makes perfect sense to have shutdown and reboot behind a 'foot' symbol.
To expand further on your perceptive realization that "...its not stupidity, its simply lack of experience.", sewing machines, electronic keyboards, and other items often have an approximately hand sized object on the end of a cable that's intended to be placed on the floor and operated with the foot. Someone who's unfamiliar with the concept of a mouse and is confronted with one for the first time has only their previous experiences to call upon in trying to figure out how to deal with this new unknown. Perhaps the lack of intelligence was on the part of mouse designers for not making it more obvious what the mouse isn't.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Well then, what operating system *will* make me special? :-)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
...and equally true is that Windows is (and has) a poorly designed interface. It's not the people using Windows that are stupid, it's the way Windows is designed.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
Interesting attitude...
If you don't know what post-modern rationalism is, do philosophers assume you are dumb? Or do they attempt to explain it?
If you don't know Russian, do Russian professors mock you, or do they try to convince you to take a Russian class?
Computer nerds are the last bastion of unadulterated bigotry, doing whatever they can to encourage a new digital apartheid and engaging in the worst forms of de-humanization rhetoric.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
You are arguing from the specific (you) to the general (everybody else). What you find stupid may not, in fact, be stupid at all.
However, my point still stands: a philosopher or Russian prof would not call those who don't understand their field of expertise stupid. You did.
While people drive cars everyday, they don't interact with the car beyond a simple interface -- an interface that they took classes to learn and years to perfect. Some secretary who can type 90 words a minute, who's had a computer with a mouse and icons and such foisted on her only sees the thing as an impediment to her abilities. To her, it is simply a fancier typewriter, albeit one that randomly erases work she's done when the app crashes, and has a jillion options she barely understands (and will never use) that are constantly hyped by a ridiculous talking paperclip.
Just once, I'd like to see a comp-sci nerd, instead of "Users are dumb", say "We don't program for our users, therefore we are poor programmers".
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages .pl?keywords=olvwm&searchon=names&subword=1&versio n=all&release=all
donfede
Actually the real solution would be for the home directory to turn into the root directory for each logged in user. Unfortunately classical Unix cannot do that, but other systems (e.g. HURD) can.
Or just kill the damn filesystem. Databases aren't exactly new technology.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Don't let the simplicity fool you, though: It may be very hard or even impossible to access this interface
:)
Well sure, it is for me too, but that's because my license was for a different installed base and expired at least 25 years ago
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The throbber is the animated icon which is commonly found in webbrowsers, usually on the toolbar... it goes all the way back to mosiac
"Where's Clippy?" (P183)
Trolling is a art,
All interfaces take, well, getting used to in the beginning, this isn't exclusive to computer interfaces. I know that every time I get into one of my friend's vehicles I have to ask, "Hey, how do I turn on the lights? Where is x y or z?".
That being said interfaces which are reasonable can be adjusted to within a reasonable amount of time. Gnome is certainly something that those of average intelligence with the right amount of time should be able to get down... If they are interested in it and there is some reason to adjust to it.
So find a reason for people to use Gnome, and they will. (I am not saying Gnome doesn't have a use...)
prosebeforehos.com
"I want to access my email, but when I open up the Access icon my messages aren't there!"
"Excel? I'd think a serious software package wouldn't be named after chewing gum."
No, not real quotes, but they could be. *Everything* has context. These Microsoftisms are only in place because that's what these people have been taught (yes, taught) to recognize. Just because something is different doesn't make it "wrong" or "less intuitive" - you have to look past the first impressions and see how the GUI works once the user gets some basic familiarity with it.
At my place of work, courses on Word and Outlook are de rigeur. Do we really want to base a user-friendly GUI on a system that requires training to use? That's what most of the comments provided seem to indicate ("where's the start button?", "why settings and not control panel?", etc).
Then why is MS dumping the Win95 interface in XP?
What happened to SUN's OpenLook (sec.)? I used it years ago when I was in collage ...
I hope you weren't an English major.
I hope so. Most CDE users already did. To put it bluntly: CDE is crap. I worked with it for five minutes and got over it. I installed fvwm :-)
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
...this coming from the people who brought you the Sun WorkShop? :)
I think it is great that this study was performed. I would, however like to see the same study performed for KDE. I see no reason for one desktop to have an advantage over the other. Choice is good.
Q.
Sure people hate what they are not familiar with. They don't like change, but some of the end comments by the users does not neccesarily support the argument that a windows like interface is needed. I like P10's comment the most:
"It is like a cross between Windows and a Mac. It looks like it is designed for everybody."
People familiar with Windows are able to just use KDE (debateable, but no studies have been performed on it so I will give it to you), but that doesn't mean that they like it. It is what they are familiar with and what they know. So they can be lazy and not have to learn anything new.
Many users will probably be like that, but there are a lot of users out there that hate the Windows interface but don't even know it because they have never used anything else. I absolutely hated the Mac interface until I used it for several days in a row. Once I became familiar with it it was very nice, I started to dread going back to my windows desktop.
Basically what I am saying is I want BOTH to thrive, I want both to be put through these kinds of tests repeatedly. People should be able to use what they like, one does not have to win over the other.
Q.
The only 100% intuitive interface is the nipple...
--
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
25: ten.knilrevlis@wkcuhc
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
OpenLook has been effectively dead for a long time. Sun switched to CDE when they ditched OpenLook in favor of Motif, which had basically won the battle at that point.
As for open sourcing it, Sun did that before they gave up on it... it was kind of their last ditch attempt to outmaneuver Motif. Unfortunately it was too late. Had they done it about a year sooner it might have made a difference.
I used to use olvwm on Linux back in the 1993 to 1995 time period... I imagine the source code is still out there for it, but I don't think it ships standard with many distros these days, let alone is part of the normal installations.
Blog Ho
What exactly does GNOME have to do with argonomics?
I don't know? What is argonomics?
The last time I checked, a desktop environment has no bearing whatsoever on soil or plnat sciences.
Yeah, most desktop environments don't work so well if you soil them, and there was soil before desktop environments, but what the hell is plnat sciences?
I had a user have a fit because he felt he shouldn't have to click the "New" button in Outlook to compose a new email message. He felt it should be labelled "Send." Your quotes are probably closer to reality than "they could be."
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Unfortunately he's really not that far from the mark. I know perfectly intelligent, reasonable, bright people who seem to lose 1/2 their IQ points when they get in front of a computer.
"How do I do <X>?"
"Um, go to Start->Programs->X?"
"What? I don't know what you're talking about!!! Stop confusing me!!!"
It's true.
Blech. Signatures.
but I am a CS major and computers are my life!
That is a frightening thought in of itself.
You're thinking of MUD Shell.
It's an interesting toy, if only to read what the designers think of the traditional *nix file structure.
-- "Perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" -Amy Weiss, RIAA
Do you have anything to substantiate your opinion? I'm serious...I'm fascinated by the concept of UI usability, and I'd love to read about KDE's.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Tying the logo with the name might have helped on the terminal emulator problem too, although they really ought change that to "Command Line Prompt" or something similar.
-sk
If only keyboards had a sensible layout....
I find it incredibly ironic that we try to learn to type fast on the QWERTY layout, one which was specifically designed to SLOW TYPISTS DOWN. In the typewriter days, keys stuck together if one typed too fast, so a new layout that impeded the typist was devised.
We should have switched to a sensible layout (one like Fitaly for Palm comes to mind) long long ago. Now, I fear, it is too late to switch...
And having it installed doesn't mean that everyone in the house has to use it. After watching me use icewm for a month, my wife decided to check out the other options on the kdm login screen. Now she spends most her time in icewm. Having a Windows-like environment just establishes a comfort level for people moving to a different platform. Once they feel at home, then they're ready to try something different.
Just as soon as I get migrated to GnuCash or Kapital, Windows is history at my house.
Actually, what I've said is that they've claimed to be studying usability and describe some principles of usability, but then actually constructed the tests so that they were actually looking at transparency instead. All of the recommendations are descriptions of ways to make the system more transparent.
A system really needs both properties, yet virtually all GUI development and research concentrates on transparency while supposing that it is discussing usability. If you are only interested in serving naive or casual users then transparency is fine. The issue of transition from naive to natural and improvement of the power user's subtle interpretation and interaction with the system is almost never considered.
In designing systems and user interfaces, it is
fundamentally important to not confuse two distinct concepts: usability and transparency.
Usability is directly related to the efficiency of
performing tasks and the ability to anticipate the
user interface for new tasks.
Transparency is the "intuitiveness" of the interface or system. It is primarily a measure of
how easy it is for a naive user to come into the
system and get a something done.
Transparency is intimately related to the experience of the users being examined. In a certain respect, it is a measure of familiarity.
Unfortunately, you will get high transparency
scores nowadays if you simply look and act like
MS Windows.
Usability is a whole other bag of onions. Some of
the features of a transparent interface are relevant in assessing usability, but only to a point. While transparency is something critical for new or casual users, it can be almost completely irrelevant to an experienced user. Once a certain level of familiarity is acheived, usable systems are those that make the most common tasks the most efficient to access and provide easy means of aggregating and controlling common
sequences of tasks. Emacs is an immensely usable
system that has a very low transparency score.
It is interesting to note that the Usability Principles in this study seem to be correctly labelled: they *are* related to interface usability. However, the assessment methodology seems to be primarily measuring *transparency*.
I'd say that this is a basic flaw in the study and
colors the recommendations highly.
It would be nice to see someone do a similar study
but concentrate on the power users and address the
issues around high performance usability.
Unless you've sat down and observed your interface getting tested with a usability professional or two who work with regular folks to see how the application works *in the real folks non-geek world* then you don't know what you're talking about.
Really, how can you argue with behavior-based experimental data that "this isn't how people behave"? Oh right - with unfounded 3l337 opinion.
Sure, there are other things we could do to better test usability - like have them spend a week or two with Gnome after this test, then test again to see how much they picked up.
but until you're doing testing with your own projects, until you appreciate that these are real people in the real world (that same world you think should use Linux as a desktop OS) then you're really missing the point.
cz
see www.usability.gov
IBM Ease of Use
The perennial Jakob Nielsen
Usability Professionals Association
Webword Usability Blog
.. it isn't the _first_ step. Eazel also did some usability-testing with Nautilus (which is an important part of GNOME), and a lot of talk in the development of Nautilus is different from other projects, because the question "but would this be intuitive?" is asked all the time..
Otherwise I agree totally with what you're saying.
KDE is currently superior in some fields, but one field GNOME is superiour is usability-testing.
Excel is a chewing gum? Never heard of it. I've seen Mangosteen gum, though... (now with 25% more Steen!)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Hehe - and here I am hating that, thinking there should be a separate app for that... too many years of lax click and release where I start moving (just before the release) to where I know my mouse needs to be... Moves the freecell link every time ;-)
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
I never seem to have that problem in any file manager... Just years of experience have told my hand and trackball what they can get away with, and where. Grown laziness, I think. That coupled with the separate menu editing in most WMs (whether it happens to be graphical or go munge a text file) keeps a person used to having to go to a separate place. I agree, for a new user (who hasn't had as much time to learn good/bad habits) it could be a great thing. For those of us set in our ways, well... change can be a hard thing sometimes :)
You made a good point with the typesetting example... those of us who learned on Pagemaker instead of Word/Wordperfect have a slightly different tilt on the way things should work...
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
"'Settings' should be in the control panel...'Settings' is not a program!" (P7)
"I wouldn't expect 'Settings' or 'System' to be under 'Program'." (P9)
It seems pretty obvious to me that the problem for this user is not that the settings are "under something called Settings" but much more that they're under something called "Programs".
Programs (applications) should be grouped together, away from settings, in order to have a friendly user interface. It has absolutly nothing to do with Microsoft naming conventions... Please stop bashing Microsoft blindly, and if you need to report those participants' comments, please dont mutate them that much.
One i've used for over a year is
the gtk+ metal theme with the
Latem sawfish theme.
It's pretty and very usable.
stephen.,
You just missed the point of this whole article. When someone is new to computers the idea that the zip disk in their hand shows up at the 'top' of the drive hierarchy right next to the CDROM just makes more sense than having it show up somewhere in a big global file system. Look at the save dialog in 2k. At the top is the desktop, followed by My Documents, My computer (with an open drive list, with drives labeled like '3 1/2 Floppy (A:)' the A: is left around for previous users I suspect it will disappear in some version soon. ), and My network places. Where do you think most people new to computers save their documents? Don't fall into the trap and believe that M$ doesn't do usability studies. They do a lot of usability studies. That is why they are always changing stuff in the UI.
Every time a new version of windows comes out I find the new UI changes annoying, after using a windows version for a few weeks the new changes make sense and I wonder why it took them so long. Personalized Menus got on my nerves for about 4 months. Now I love them. M$ is much more careful with this stuff. If GNOME implemented personalized menu's they would forget the most important usability feature. The most important feature in the personalized menu's is the fact that if a user is looking 'lost' then the menu's open all the way up. Ever watch your grandmother use a computer? When she gets confused she sort of 'locks up' and moves really slow. When this happens a little bubble opens and its says "where are my programs...." explaining what happened to your programs, points at the little '>>' and the menu's pop all the way open. Test it out! You have to act like your grandma for it to work though. I use a computer like I'm on speed so I normally never see this crap but its there, if i slow down for a second it appears. I like linux, but I use a windows box to do linux development because the UI and the tools are much better.
There are going to be a lot of posts like, "What lusers! They need to RTFM so that they know that 'terminal emulator' actually means command line prompt!"
This is not what you should take away from a user interface study. This *is* what the users see when first presented with the program. It really doesn't matter what the programmers/designers of GNOME think. If the user doesn't like it, then he doesn't like it! If he can't understand, then he can't understand.
A long time tenet of communication is that if there is miscommunication, then it is usually the fault of the communicator who hasn't adequately taken into account the audience. If we as programmers/designers aren't using the interface to *communicate* then it is *we* who are failing to communucate, not the audience who is failing to understand.
Why do you think that MS has slowly moved to simpler and simpler language? People don't need techo-speak to understand what is going on with the computer. Understanding phrases like "illegal operation" requires a bit of underlying knowledge about why such an analogy is being used. So why use it. Just say, "your computer just crashed, but it's okay. Just press that little button on the front of the computer so it can restart. Have a nice day!".
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
Just wait until you have to recompile your kernel, not once, but twice! This happened to me some time ago - I first recompiled it because my ZIP drive wasn't working properly (had to migrate from 2.2.13 to 2.2.14) - after I did that, my sound card died (because the OSS driver was for the old kernel). So, I had to go through the process again to set up ALSA (as a loadable module). Recently I had to do it again for my joystick.
/boot, but I had been running the vmlinuz in /, not /boot (probably due to the instructions I had used to make the patch previously) - so I moved it, but forgot to run lilo - blammo! - once I got over that, I just left it in /boot, cleaned up /, and reset lilo.conf to look at the right spot, ran lilo (important!!!) and went from there.
The first time I did it - I forgot to run LILO (very important) - system refused to go past the load stage - break out a boot disk, go to root - vi lilo.conf, run lilo this time, reboot - everything fine.
This happened to me again recently (not scary this time - immediately recognized my mistake) - I upgraded my system from SuSE 6.3 to SuSE 7.2 - and when I rebooted, while I had KDE2 (well, I had to create a symlink because X kept choking on loading the accelerated X driver), I was still running the old kernel. Seems that SuSE 7.2 put it in
Then, of course, I found I was only running the old X - and not X 4.0 as I thought - finding out that the base upgrade only installed portions of X4 - so I had to add that, and run the config to move to X4 (can't remember the name) - then YAST2 wasn't setup, and I needed to get the drivers for 3D acceleration - ARGHHHHHHH!
Let's just say it has been an interesting few days (and I am still fighting to get the Samba server set up - will probably have to recompile the kernel to get my joystick set up - it "went away" after I did the update, so since the kernel was the only big thing that changed, it must be the issue - I think. I am also unsure whether Java, Perl, or my other custom compiled apps all work properly - fun, fun, fun!) - but I sure do like the new KDE2...
BTW - damn - that NVidia driver for 3D acceleration is much faster than what I had before - I don't like the splash screen every time I log off/log on to the system through KDM (anyone know if there is a way to turn this off - or know of a recompiled version of the driver - it comes with source, I am thinking about stripping that code out and recompiling?)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
In Mac OS X, the Apple menu has at once been deprecated (no longer used as a system launcher/customization tool), and brought forward (important system commands stored there).
The one was 'cause customization was Byzantine (dig around in the System Folder for a Folder to use to customize it), the latter 'cause it's supported by the menu hierarchy they're putting forward
(System-level stuff -> App -> situational)
In UI tests, failing to realize the Apple menu was a menu was a common stumbling block for naive users on Macs.
William
--
Lettering Art in Modern Use
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Female Prison Rape in NY
That's pretty silly when you think about it. A C: drive, the syntax (C:) etc... It's as weird as anything under Linux. It's just that users have learned this one since the beginning of time, er, MS/DOS epoch, so now they expect the same kind of sillyness.
We need to corrupt our youth at an early age so when they are exposed to the Windows world, they'll be like "Drive letters? How fucking primitive!" :-)
"Who gives a shit?"
People who are worried that users taught bad habits will actually force them away from being able to write elegant, intuitive systems. Easiest is not always best, etc. (Hardest is not always best either). Seems like GNOME needs a "novice" mode, which like Windows 98 hides all the advanced stuff (like scary black windows my god!), but can be displayed with a click of a button (or by a permanent setting). This way both novices and advanced users can be happy. Maybe every GUI feature can have an experience rating, and the user can set what experience level the GUI should display itself up to.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Mozilla, XMMS, Gimp, Compupic, Gphoto, Balsa, Freecell, ...
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
...and even babies, check my OpenBSD baby .
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
People familiar with Windows or MacOS will be lost with Gnome, or any new user interface. Because they already know icons, locations, shortcuts, etc. Working on something different needs time.
My girlfriend never used computers before we met together. And on my computer, there's only OpenBSD, FreeBSD and Linux. I showed her how to log in, browse internet, paint, play music, print photos, etc. Her desktop has icons for main applications.
And she's not lost. She can use the computer without any help. With Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD.
The last week, she had to work on Word 2000 at her daily job. She was totally lost, found Windows slow and ugly, didn't understand why the word processor had so many complicated buttons and menus, etc.
So no interface is more intuitive than another. It's just a question of what you are more familiar with.
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
I can't wait for all the idiots to start posting, "But they're going to make it just like Windows!!!"
While the reality is is that not only are 'regular' users familiar with windows, but MS has spent significant resources studying exactly these issues and they are common even to those who are not familiar with windows. Many of these concepts (which the Linux community has shunned for years trying to avoid being like Windows) are going to have to be embraced (and extended) by the Linux community if they are going to gain any mindshare in the population.
-Adam
This sig 80% recycled bits, 20% post user.
Your suggestion that we ignore people preconcieved notions about UI is unreasonable© I doubt there are many GNOME users that didn't first learn the ins and outs of using a mouse on Windows or Mac©
We can make a better UI than Win or Mac, but it must still conform to the precidents set by other OSes if people are going to use it©
Parallel case: it might be "better" to set Linux to Dvorak keyboard layout by default© But people have been pre-exposed to Qwerty, so that's what we're going to use©
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I'm running a patched Gnome 1.4 with this setup right now. I'm not the author of the patches, but I've done a little integration work with them (added them to the relevant Ximian source rpms) and I wrote the sawfish support that they currently need. The Gnome global menu uses the same window hints as KDE, so the global menu on Gnome apps will work fine under KDE and vice versa.
For those not willing to apply patches, Gnome will have an optional global menu (based pretty much on the same code, I think) in 2.0, which is unfortunately a long way off.
--
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow
As users explored Nautilus further, they discovered that it was a browser:
"It has a desktop file system feel and a web feel, from the icons and the throbber." (P4)
Anyone mind telling me what the hell P4 is speaking of? I wasn't aware Nautilis had a "throbber".
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Nah, the solution was far simpler than that. I just set the user's home directory as the default starting point of the graphical file manager, and hidden the directory tree from the default view . Problem solved, everybody happy.
Back when I was administering a Linux network, the most common questions from users were "Where's my C drive?" and "How do I make all those weird directories dissapear?" (referring to the stuff in /, *after* unsuccessfully trying to delete them). Good thing they didn't have root access...
This is really great work. Bravo.
It's sometimes painful to watch the average user struggle with things that seem obvious, but this is exactly the kind of feedback that is difficult for a programmer to get.
For linux to succeed on the desktop, Gnome (or KDE or something equivalent) must do well at meeting the needs and expectations of this kind of user.
I hope people will see this report as a very valuable insight into what goes throught the minds of ordinary users. I did. Hell, I've even thought the same thing as in some of the comments (I shouldn't have to click on the login box to type my username!)
Indeed. The really, really funny thing is that a lot of Windows users can't even use a very slightly modified Windows system.
For instance, I used a hex editor to change the word on my start menu from "Start" to something useful (i.e. the name of the computer, Astarte).
Every single person who sat down at it saked, "Where is your start button?" immediately. Even though it was in the exact same place. Nothing else changed except the word on it. I'm not talking about just my mom; I'm talking about engineer types, people who have used other operating systems (primarily SGI Irix) extensively.
If the people in this survey had clicked a nappy foot, or a K on the top of the screen, or even some "useful text string in the lower left hand corner" every day for 10 years, they would sit down at a MS windows box and say "Where are the programs at?" or, "'Start'? what a stupid name for a computer!"
Neh
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
Someone forgot to click preview (and Slash won't allow me to resubmit)
/usr/share/appmenu ?
:1' is not intuitive
All comments based upon Ximian GNOME 1.4 updates as of 20010722 and KDE 2.1.1 wit the KDElibs 2.1.2 patch applied.
* Gnome 1.4 can't make icons (launchers) on the desktop unless dragged from Nautilus. One can't modify those properties. Which is bad. GNOME 1.2 and KDE allow this.
* If a launcher can't find a program, I don't get an error message (must less GNOME having the brains to find the program). KDE allows this.
* If a launcher runs a program that spits out text, I can't see the text. I think the launcher shuld wait and see if any windows are being launched by the program, and if they don't pop up within a given time limit, show their text output.
* Nobody selects their apps based on toolkit. My mom doesn't ask for a GTK app. She want's soemthing to read her mail. So can GNOME and KDE start both start using a directory like
* Indeed, Programs = Applications. Both GNOME and KDE suffer from this bug.
* Ximian GNOME 1.4, with all updates, is still very slow on an Athlon 900 w/ 384MB RAM. Or, more specifically, Nautilus is bad.
* Implementation of things (semitransparency) which should be in X into GNOME is a bad technical decision.
* The GDM bug which allowed entry only when the mouse was over the dialog has been fixed a while ago.
* If I try something in Control Center, I shouldn't need to commit the changes.
* Any app that ever tells me I should be root should be shot. If I have permission to su, ask me for the password. Otherwise, tell me I'm not allowed to run the program.
* Windows XP GUI multiuser capabilities are unfortunately better than GNOME and KDEs. I.e., its possible to go back to the login manager and log in as someone else while the other user keeps their GUI session open.
Changing to a VT, logging in as another user and running `startx --
* I want to change the layout of the window buttons. How do I know what NextStep / macOS / Windows used? I just want the X on the left!
* Red Carpet is great, and should replace GNORPM as the standard software installation method. For that matter, what exactly is a GNORPM? Let's rename Red Carpet to `Software Installer or `Installer' and put it on the default desktop (or high up in the menus)
* GNOME and KDE require other apps to be launched to modify their menu structure. Its not achievable via drag and drop.
* Like the study says, a foot isn't immediately apparent as a launcher. Neither is a giant K. KDE call this button the go button, and should fix the imagery to be more obvious (a `Go' street sine that pulses when people first log in?). GNOME should also do something like this.
I'm not sure "shell" would mean any more than "terminal emulator"....
Agreed. Hijacking of the term shell to mean CLI is simply wrong. A shell is something designed to protect users, or something that covers up what is beneath. Everything is a layer of abstractions at some sense (you use bash? Real men who know what they're doing write to their disks by hand with magnetised needles).
My shell is KDE. My friends shells are explorer.exe and GNOME
I think `command prompt' would be an appropriately specific title.
All comments based upon Ximian GNOME 1.4 updates as of 20010722 and KDE 2.1.1 wit the KDElibs 2.1.2 patch applied. * Gnome 1.4 can't make icons (launchers) on the desktop unless dragged from Nautilus. One can't modify those properties. Which is bad. GNOME 1.2 and KDE allow this. * If a launcher can't find a program, I don't get an error message (must less GNOME having the brains to find the program). KDE allows this. * If a launcher runs a program that spits out text, I can't see the text. I think the launcher shuld wait and see if any windows are being launched by the program, and if they don't pop up within a given time limit, show their text output. * Nobody selects their apps based on toolkit. My mom doesn't ask for a GTK app. She want's soemthing to read her mail. So can GNOME and KDE start both start using a directory like /usr/share/appmenu ?
* Indeed, Programs = Applications. Both GNOME and KDE suffer from this bug.
* Ximian GNOME 1.4, with all updates, is still very slow on an Athlon 900 w/ 384MB RAM. Or, more specifically, Nautilus is bad.
* Implementation of things (semitransparency) which should be in X into GNOME is a bad technical decision.
* The GDM bug which allowed entry only when the mouse was over the dialog has been fixed a while ago.
* If I try something in Control Center, I shouldn't need to commit the changes.
* Any app that ever tells me I should be root should be shot. If I have permission to su, ask me for the password. Otherwise, tell me I'm not allowed to run the program.
* Windows XP GUI multiuser capabilities are unfortunately better than GNOME and KDEs. I.e., its possible to go back to the login manager and log in as someone else while the other user keeps their GUI session open.
Changing to a VT, logging in as another user and running `startx -- :1' is not intuitive
* I want to change the layout of the window buttons. How do I know what NextStep / macOS / Windows used? I just want the X on the left!
* Red Carpet is great, and should replace GNORPM as the standard software installation method. For that matter, what exactly is a GNORPM? Let's rename Red Carpet to `Software Installer or `Installer' and put it on the default desktop (or high up in the menus)
* GNOME and KDE require other apps to be launched to modify their menu structure. Its not achievable via drag and drop.
* Like the study says, a foot isn't immediately apparent as a launcher. Neither is a giant K. KDE call this button the go button, and should fix the imagery to be more obvious (a `Go' street sine that pulses when people first log in?). GNOME should also do soemthing like this.
If this can influence development gnome would get a significant advantage over KDE (or anything else). Sun is particularly good on making sure UIs are usable. They used to have a page documenting the UI revisions to their web site. It was very well thought out and lead to a very usable web site.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
Things that make you look or feel stupid:
Incomprehensible error messages
Programs that don't remember what you did 2 seconds ago (if I saved a file 30 times in the same directory I'm probably going to want to save it there the next time I save it, not in the program's 'default' directory)
Programs that let you destroy 2 weeks of work with one keystroke
Programs that ask you to confirm that yes you are really super-duper extra sure you want to do what you said you want to do
Programs that require you to remember factoids like where you saved a file (before you get outraged, libraries let you find a book by title, author, several options - why can't computers?)
Programs that require you to do many manual options to do a single task
There are many many examples of this, all unintentional of course. Because really rather little software is 'designed' most of it emerges rather messily, and when it is designed it is usually designed by software engineers whose concerns are not those of the user. Automotive engineers never INTENDED to make boring boxy cars, their specialty just wasn't sleek design.
If the topic is user interface design, nothing important will be said until everyone involved has read 'About Face: the Essentials of User Interface Design' by Alan Cooper (here on amazon). I've been re-reading it again, and am amazed at the insight and the prescience.
.... Ok?'.
Fundamental is the difference between good software engineering, and good user interface design. The automobile industry recognizes this gap - most users don't see what engineering is embedded in the engine, drivetrain, etc, but everyone sees the smooth lines of the body. And the second you sit behind the wheel you can tell if the designers intelligently arranged the controls to be easily accessible and clearly read. NONE of this has ANYTHING to do with the engineering of the car - it could have a revolutionary new suspension system, but that's not what you see. The same gap exists between user interface design and software engineering. An elegant use of pointers is invisible to your user. The relative elegance of software engineering techniques means nothing for user interface design.
Programmers tend to be BAD at interface design - BECAUSE we understand more about how the machines and software work than the average user does. We know the box, so we don't think outside the box.
The book opens with a great discussion of a user's goals, which are usually NOT to recompile a kernel. Cooper says users want: to not look stupid, to get an adequate amount of work done, not be too bored. These goals are clearly not addressed by error boxes that pop up saying 'library x caused a page fault at
Thats funny, I never shut down that way.
I just hit ctrl-alt-del then press the shutdown button.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." -- Albert Einstein
I've been thinking about this one. One idea I've had is "liberating" some of Jacob Berkman's code from the gnome panel (simply as a matter of laziness, since they already have a "top of the screen widget" and have dealt with all the Xlib root window cruftiness) and then bonobize it, and then hack Gtk at the lowest level possible to communicate with the bonobized menu widget. Of course, you'd have to deal with updating that menu every time you switch to a different application.
KDE does the global menu bar (from what I've heard) through giving the WM a few clever hints. I really should check out their code when I have time. It's probably a much more sane way of doing it than my previous suggestion.
Go wolfpack!!!
look like Windows"
Apple spent far more resources than Microsoft developing their UI, and many of the choices they made were because they were shown to be effective in the usability lab. Microsoft made many of their UI decisions not because they were well thought out and well tested, but because they were different from apple and less likely to get them sued (though Apple filed suit anyways). If you try to do the opposite of what is well researched, you'll often end up shooting yourself in the ass. Of course, if you've got a monopoly, it doesn't matter how unusable the damn thing is.
If the linux community is to succeed in the market, they will have to accept that the people who designed and used what they consider to not be a "real computer" actually know a hell of a lot more than they do in a certain area. If they are smart, they will accept their guidance.
Yah. It's called "Bash." It's a little esoteric to use, but it's damn fast. You can extend its functionality with plug in modules called "programs." For instance, for a lot of flexible multi-directory operations there's the "find" program. Hundreds of such "programs" have been written and many of them are probably available on your system already. You should experiment a bit with the fast, flexible bash file manager.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I have Gnome installed on my Linux box, but more often than not, I use the command line to naviagte through my directories. Why? Because it's faster. The Gnome file manager takes about 3-4 seconds to open a directory on my 350 MHz box. If I'm trying to find a directory 4 layers deep, this adds up to annoyance.
Does that mean the command line is better? Definitely not! I'm a Mac user and I love Apple's interface. But in Mac OS, opening a folder is instantaneous. I can find a file in Mac OS at least as fast as I can using a command line.
What it comes down to is this: In designing a user interface, there are tradeoffs in speed vs. functionality. I would like to see more speed, specifically in the Gnome file manager. I'm quite willing to trade some features for more speed, because without the speed, the features aren't useful to me.
Does anyone know if there is a lightweight, fast file browser out there?
Is there a mirror anywhere else?
I just hope the gnome people live up to their initial design principles and provide a way to tune the system's behavior; something like "i'm not mentally retarded" checkbox that would inhibit all this annoying and useless behavior.
I'm sure these people don't complain that their car doesn't freeze time and pops up a dialog saying "you're about to have an accident, do you want to stop?". There's a brain inside your skull, so use it!
This could quite possibly be one of the best and most accurate quotes that I have seen posted on here in a long, long time. It about sums up the attitudes that I've seen from a number of programmers that I deal with on a daily basis.
I'm employed as a usability professional for a fairly major e-comm web site; which means that I get to see the world from the unique perspective of the users, and of the programmers. A lot of the time, problems with the system come down to sheer laziness by the programmers, not wanting to code it just a bit differently because "that's the way the back end works".
My users don't talk to the ass of the system, they talk to the face.
That face needs to be logically laid out, from the point of view of the user. Your idea of logical is fine on the back end where no one sees the code but other programmers. Your idea of logical is irrelevant on the front end where users see it. The only way to find out what is logical to the users is to run tests like this. Do some card sorts, run some hierarchical stucture evaluations, do some task based analyses, observe, go to your users and just watch them.
You're not programming for yourself, you're programming for your users. As long as you program for yourself, no one will ever use your products.
I see this attitude echoed in the *nix/BSD community far too frequently for comfort: Users are seen as stupid, as illiterate, as not caring to RTFM.
Well designed systems don't need a manual.
An OS is a tool, and a well designed OS is an invisible tool. All the OS is required to do is to allow a user to accomplish the tasks that they have set out to do, whether that's check their email, surf the web, write a paper, play a game, check their calendars, or look up a phone number.
The less the system makes itself visible to the user while they try to accomplish this task, the more likely the user will be to succeed and have a good experience.
Until you actually see a user struggle with an interface, something designed so illogically that it hurts, you'll never understand. Even if you do see a user struggle to the point where you just want to end the test, you'll never get it until you stop thinking of users as stupid. Users are not stupid. Period.
Pathetically poor usability will contribute 50% to the issue of Linux not being taken up on the desktop. The egotistical, ideocentric ideals of it's self proclaimed zealots will make up the other 50% of why Linux isn't taken up.
Get rid of those problems and maybe someone will consider it for use in somewhere other than in the server room.
I read as much of it as I could before developer.gnome.org succumbed, and I got as far as where they suggested that we put a label to the hostname. That might help some people but I'm imagining that applying this idea of labels everywhere will quickly clutter things up. How difficult would it be to put a "What's this?" button in the corner/help menu, so that anyone who wanted to know what "localhost" is could use the question-mark cursor to find out, rather than wasting real estate?
Hmmm, might be feasible with BonoboUI?
Yeah, there'd be all the X-associated problems, but then also there would be an inconsistent interface for non-gnome / non-bonobo apps. I wouldn't recommend a gtk hack, just because it feels wrong (esp since they can just throw menus anywhere), and it also leaves out Qt-, tcl-, et al-based apps and probaby creates more confusion for the end-user than we started with (though an option for advanced users would probably be suitable). Anyway, I'm not a gnome/bonobo expert, but if you'd like to discuss it, email me or look me up on irc.gimp.net (strick)
People who are worried that users taught bad habits will actually force them away from being able to write elegant, intuitive systems.
... . I'm no fan of MS, but for all the things they do wrong, designing User Interfaces for the appropriate customer base isn't one of them.
I recall reading, way back in the days when Windows 3 was still "vaporware", that Microsoft had spent a considerable amount of time asking users what various menu items should be named and what items should be on which menu. I'm sorry if it offends some of the brilliant UI designers in the audience, but that is EXACTLY how you design an "intuitive" system intended for a mass audience
Recalling my first experiences with GNOME, I find that the user comments were on the money, even though I had been using Linux (with a KDE desktop) for more than a year at the time. I also agree with almost ALL of the Sun "Design Recommendations." Could it be that the mindset required to design and implement good code prevents one from thinking at the level of Joe User?
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
utter rubbish
Even if it wasn't that humor has a full right to a place in the community. 90% of humor is about the failabilities of others, the other 10% is about ourselves. The submitter isn't hurting anyone by finding that concept amusing, especially not in an environment that is primarily *nix users in the first place.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Well you're kind of ignoring my post, and directly attempting to make me feel bad. Fortunately I know I make mistakes and it doesn't bother me at all, especially when I have a limited time to get a post in and have to type quickly.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Dare me huh? You got it, but then I run XFS. I can't reccomend running a journaling file system highly enough.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
What happened to SUN's OpenLook (sec.)? I used it years ago when I was in collage and I must say I LOVED it. Why isn't SUN promoting it? Why not open-source it?
---------------
Sig
abbr.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Take this ball and run with it, someone! Don't just bitch about how "Microsoft has conditioned everyone to look for a Control Panel!" Who gives a shit? If your intent is to write software for use by the masses, you'd better be damn sure and write it so that the masses will like it and want to use it!
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Why ? because the strength of the KDE look-and-feel is that it's a close copy of Microsoft Windows
But the funny thing is that I also feel that KDE's greatest weakness is that it is a close copy of MS Windows. As a battle-hardened Unix user who started with austerity of TWM, has been scarred by OpenWindows, scratched by CDE and finally found salvation in FVWM before the time of Sawfish's appearance on the scene, KDE's default window manager feels too constraining. It's not configurable enough - I can't push into working in the way I want it to work. I can't program it in Lisp. The list goes on :-)
That's not to say I don't like the KDE stuff - I just run it from my Gnome desktop. The apps are fab, but you can keep the window manager.
Thankfully we have a choice :-)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Dear webmaster@foo.org;
We at Slashdot have found some interesting information on your fine site. In approximately ten minutes we will be posting a link to http://www.foo.org/articles?id=1234pdq on the main page of our News for Nerds page, with a few lines of inflammatory comment.
This is likely to result in approximately fifty thousand Linux geeks trying to access this page at the same time.
Historically, we have found that this often results in routers turning into stuttering braindamaged shells of their former selves, and webservers melting down into steaming heaps of slag.
Please alert your webadmins/netadmins/ISP.
Thank you and have a nice day.
Sincerely, CmdrTaco
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
The steady adoption of linux has developers more and more conserned about what joe-average would like on their desktop. And often (as this report shows) joe-average wants fewer options, less customizability, fewer utilities, fewer programs. Really what they want is more herding. Clippy.
Linux (GNOME, KDE, whatever) is great because those things aren't present. I'm terrified that one day I'll be writing a linux app and my boss'll walk in and say: "Those advanced search tools you've been writing... too many buttons, cut out 10 features... I don't care which". And I'll say, "But it's stable, ready to ship". And the response'll be, "We know, I've allocated two more weeks so you can remove the buttons."
Usability issues are one thing,
"It seems like there's more than normal, that it's giving me a whole bunch of choices." (P1)
Is just scary. I don't know if it's just me, but I pray that we don't see a steady decline of value to suit the Lowest Common Denominator.
Aaron
AaronCameron.net
First of all it might be good to have a bad passwd
42
MS may not have succeeded totally--check out the questions about Nautilus, where some people got confused about whether they were in a web browser or a file manager. I thought that when MS did that with IE, it was a wonderful thing.
I think this may have been a flaw in the test. The users were simply plopped in front of terminals and told there was a new system on it. In the real world, there would be some exposure to advertising. There would be e-mails sent to employees. There would probably be a meeting about it or somethig. Usually people see the product logo before it ends up on their system.
You may be right. But ideally, it would be nice if they were plopped in front of the system and everything made sense to them. It's a goal to shoot for, even if it can't ever be reached. The foot may actually be a poor choice for a logo since it isn't immediately recognizable as one, but I don't think GNOME is likely to change it based on one usability survey. That'd be way too much work for too little benefit.
I would certainly say that the meaning of that one button is not as big a deal as many of the other things they revealed in the test, since once they know it is the logo it makes sense and they will remember. The settings under programs thing, on the other hand, I could easily see confusing them over and over again. The same with many of the other points raised.
Reading it, the comments seemed to be a lot of things like:
"This is ridiculous! The start button is a foot? What does a foot have to do with a start button?"
Read a little further. They gave the participants the very important hint that the foot is the GNOME logo and then:
Their guesses were all dead on. If you didn't know that the footprint was the GNOME logo, you'd be confused, too. Think of all the associations you can make with a footprint. Traveling, history...exactly what they guessed.
"Whoa? How come the settings are under something called "Settings"?? Where is the control panel?"
Your paraphrase lost the meaning of the original. Try this instead:
They were not confused that the settings were in something called "Settings"; they were confused that the settings were in "Programs". Sounds like a pretty valid complaint to me.
Microsoft has succeeded in making their own screwed up naming conventions the "standard" of computers everywhere.
No. The users' expectations you've quoted were reasonable and not centric to a Microsoft desktop. You found what you expected to. You completely ignored all the information contrary to it.
Yeah many people don't like mixing a browser and a file manager (I am not one of those) but I think the big problem here is that Natilus tried to look like a web browser but didn't let you do web browsing. With IE it mixes the two but and actually lets you do both tasks instead of looking like it should be able to both tasks and only doing one of them.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
So why do I drag a disk to the trashcan to eject it then?
No, you've got it all wrong. It shouldn't ask you what you want to do. It should tell you what to do. You have to realize, that users are totally clueless and they don't know what they want. They have to be pulled around the desktop and told what they want. Here is a much better scenario:
.NET?: Netscape
Hello, you want to login as MsBob, right? : msbob
You're going to enter your password now: ********
Welcome to Windows 2004!
Do you want to see the list of Microsoft-approved websites, or use the latest beta of
I'm sorry, 'Netscape' is not an approved program. By requesting this forbidden operation, your lease on the operating system has been accelerated 7 months.
WARNING: Your lease on this Operating System has EXPIRED, but you are still using it. This behavior is undemocratic and illegal. The MS piracy police will be visiting you shortly.
[computer starts smoking and monitor melts...]
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
Agreed... if they wanted to use a word 'Start' was not the right one. I've been using computers in some, way, shape or form, for 10 years now. When Win95 came out and I tried using it it took me a while to figure out what 'Start' was really for. I would click on a desktop icon to select it, then hit 'Start' thinking that would launch it. Took a good half an hour for me to figure out how to use and customize the menu. Very frustrating really.
Something like "Main Menu" would have been more logical, or, heck, just "Stuff".
I'm running Ximian on my desktops now, and I like the ability to break Programs, System, and Help off onto their own little menus on the pager. Takes away that extra layering of menus w/out cluttering the pager all up.
Remembering that it always takes Redmond three versions to get it right, you should test drive PocketPC, aka Wince 3.0. It largely abandons the start menu approach, thereby increasing the OS's useability (and, ironically, simultaneously creating a cottage industry in third-party apps that add it back in). It's by no means up to the Palm standard, but the improvements are dramatic.
While I agree that it can be important to make this distinction, I'm not sure confusion between them invalidates the Sun study. To an extent, I'd argue that say "useability" simply means how easy the UI is to use -- and this embraces both transparency and "useability" issues.
I'd say the Sun study is useful, such conceptual confusions notwithstanding.
Executive Summary The usability study is unusable by a non-Gnome developer. There is some question whether it will make an impression on a Gnome developer. The authors are searching for a Gnome developer that can communicate with regular humans or usability testers in order to test this hypothesis.
I think this may have been a flaw in the test. The users were simply plopped in front of terminals and told there was a new system on it. In the real world, there would be some exposure to advertising. There would be e-mails sent to employees. There would probably be a meeting about it or somethig. Usually people see the product logo before it ends up on their system. Actually, when you run startx the logo comes up then, but they didn't have them do that. I'm sure that would bring back a lot of memories of having to type WIN every morning. I'd say most Linux desktops are about where Win3.x was in terms of useability.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
In the future, will all UIs have to have start buttons, control panels and taskbars to be considered usable?
Really, I'm not sure if it matters. With GNOME (and KDE, I'm not going to start THAT war) you can pretty much customize to your heart's content. It would be a simple thing to make the expected buttons say "Start" or what have you, but still leave it customizeable. For instance, most GUI's (even in LinuxLand) default to "Click to raise" (of course on MS this is the only option unless you install the resource kit - or is it tweakUI? - doesn't matter) so that they emulate MS's windowing style. Fine, whatever, I accept that something else would be confusing to certain people. Personally, though, if the window manager won't support "Focus strictly follows mouse" I'm not going to use it, because that's the only way I like to work. When it comes down to it I could care less what the defaults are, just as long as it remains configurable enough that I can use it the way I want to. All that said I'm still using WindowMaker without GNOME.
One last thought: this discussion has highlighted how many people have yet to understand that GNOME can use any of several window managers- including AfterStep, WindowMaker, Sawfish, Enlightenment, FVWM, FVWM2, Ice, and a bunch of others I haven't mentioned. Don't get the WM confused with the environment.
Politics, Culture, Food?
default to "Click to raise"
Sorry, that should have been "click to focus with autoraise".
Politics, Culture, Food?
I think you are 100% right on this. Linux distro's can't be too innovative with the interface yet because the average person already is somewhat familiar with windows.
:^D
The way to advance Linux on the desktop is to make something that looks just like windows. Then when there are two kinds of windows, one that is stable and free and one that crashes and costs $200, then the choice will be clear to all consumers.
Corporations especially will enjoy saving several hundred dollars (windows + office) multiplied by hundreds or thousands of desktops. And that savings happens for each upgrade cycle which is typically about 2 years. There is also the savings due to users not sitting for 10 minutes 3x a day waiting for windows to reboot.
Honestly though, some machines can be used for days before crashing. It seems to be a crapshoot. However there is obviously a significant amount of savings that will go directly to the bottom line and thus our stock portfolios and profit sharing programs!
>"Terminal emulator program" means NOTHING to the "average" user, but "Shell" "Console" or "GNOME Prompt" would.
I don't think so. When I help users over the phone and I tell them to open a "DOS prompt" or "Command prompt" about 3/4 of them say 'What!?!? How do I do that?'
>Linux will probably NEVER get the drooling idiots, but do we want them?
Yes, we do. There is strength in numbers due to something called "economies of scale". Look it up. Also it would be in bad taste to abandon Grandma just because she has a hard time with Windows.
I have heard of people referred to as Linux 'elitists' before, but I always thought they were a myth or just Microsoft devotees pretending to be Linux enthusiasts to give us a bad name. If you are neither of those things then please think hard about how to include those who are less adept with technology.
I think that Linux distro's will be far easier to use than Windows in a few short years, like Palm Pilots on steroids, yet the advanced user will be able to get to all the powerful tools which are tucked away out of sight.
> they mention that during the UI design of
> Win95, once Micros~1 went to a software store
> and bought a single copy of each application
I think you'll find they used these to test the code rather than the UI.
how is asking a question about what a certain unfamiliar icon does "funny?" i should hope you aren't ridiculing the user (haha, laugh at the user, he doesn't know what that button does, what a moron) such "humor" has no place in the community -mike
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
--
I'd rather be lucky than good.
I don't know? What is argonomics?
When I sat at the terminal and booted up the drive
I thought that everything would look like Windows 95
I had a bunch of tasks that I was given to complete
But I must confess this 'linux' thing has really got me beat
The login screen looked simple - wait, just what does 'login' mean?
I'm typing in my name, but nothing shows up on the screen!
They said I'd lost my focus - well, I think it rather rude
To blame it on the user when the interface is screwed
And I...
The icons were quite pretty, they were outlined in 3d
But I hadn't any idea what the glyphs were meant to be
I clicked a few at random - now I wonder who would put
A menu and a terminal on buttons with a foot
And I...
They said we had to find a file - "now that I think I know
I'll open up the menu and select - hey, where'd it go?!"
I knew just what I wanted, but they'd placed me in a bind
For 'find' would find the file, but what would help me find the 'find'?
And I...
This 'Nautilus' looks nifty, it's not just another shell
It's listed out my files, and lets me browse the web as well
I even found the 'find', but when I tried to go ahead
The only thing it showed me was a pencil barred in red
And I...
I opened up a webpage and a file, and I was lost
The browser and the OS must have got their signals crossed
The navigation buttons on the file - what do they mean?
And why can't I edit something that is open on my screen?
And I...
To customize the desktop was an oddly painful chore
I had to add a timepiece to the panel, nothing more
I tried to find the clock, but I was surely not to blame
For ending up in a twisty maze of menus, all the same
And I...
The control panel proved to be a nightmare, through and through
I stared at all the options, but I didn't have a clue
The font took half an hour to change; I asked if it looked nice
They shook their heads and told me that I had to do it thrice
And I...
I worked my way through every task I saw upon the list
When I got up to go it turned out there was one I'd missed
I knew this thing was hard, but even so I never dreamed
That 'leave the machine' could be so much harder than it seemed
Copyright (c) Martin DeMello, 2001
TTTO "Banned from Argo" (Leslie Fish)
To a certain extent, yes. While your average programmer prob. won't have too much trouble adjusting to a new env. an average user will. It's a bit like asking "Why can't folks just adjust to a base 8 number system. It's no less difficult to use than base 10." The fact of the matter is that the windows interface are what people are used to. Deviate too much from it and people will become confused. But yes, it is still sad.
This is really, reallly funny. I am in slackjawed awe, can you imagine where this method of argument could take us?
The possibilities......
Welcome to hostname,, what is your username? _________
Hello username what is your password? _________
The username or password was not found on the system, push enter to continue. (back to top)
or
OK, username, you are logged in, what would you like to do? (show menu)...
and on it goes. This could even be implemented in text format, and it would leave no confusion to the newbies. The experts would see it as patronizing, but it wouldn't slow them down at all, so they wouldn't mind too much (?)
What do you think of the general idea?
I don't know how many times I've had to talk folks over the phone through opening a command prompt to get something done under Windows, this isn't funny, it's just that people have been weaned off CLI's in favor of GUI's. It's part of what has gotten computers so far into homes and buisnesses in the past ten years.
Ignorance isn't funny unless it's something that should be common sense, and in this case it's not. Performing and then implementing these types of studies is a good thing for all concerned.
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
Even more interesting would be the study performed on Microsoft Bob.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
What exactly does GNOME have to do with argonomics? The last time I checked, a desktop environment has no bearing whatsoever on soil or plnat sciences.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Am I the only who finds it ironic that in Windows you have to click "Start" to shutdown? How's that for intuitive? I'll take a foot over that any day.
-antipop
Studies like this are performed on windows systems and applications. Microsoft has special usabiliy labs, complete with one-way mirrors and video-monitoring for analysing common usage patterns and problems.
I find it somewhat ammusing that the Sun study basically recommends, where applicable, that the GNOME features be made to work more like windows. Not because windows is better (or worse), just because most novice users think the same way and Windows has already taken most of that into account through extensive usability testing. The fact that some of the users in the test had already used other, well-tested systems, like Windows and Mac obviously shows through. But I believe that if you took computer 'virgins' and ran them through the same tests, they'd probably come up with similar results, especially in the areas of error-elimination and better up-front user education.
It's interesting that Linux and Windows are tending towards similar user experiences, but from completely different angles: Unix has traditionally been for the expert and is moving towards the novice. Windows and the Mac have traditionally been for the novice but both are providing more customizability and advanced features for the expert.
And that's why you set their shell to Word, Outlook, or whatever application they need to run. That way, there is only one application, and you don't even have to train them to "click on an icon." It loads automatically. But they probably padded their resume anyways when they said they know how to use Excel.
That also has the advantage of stopping them from browsing the web or otherwise wasting the company's money while they're at work doing personal things.
This would be necessary, of course, to include with a very restrictive system policy to lock down non-approved applications.
And before you "free-everything" loud mouths pipe up and say that infringes on people's rights or is not proper, try running a company. See how productive your employees are if you end up paying them to surf the web 2 hours a day, talk at the coffee machine another hour, and end up working 5 hours (and probably not working very hard either).
These are the kind of people you fire immediately. They have no "right to the web" at work. They can do this at home on their own time.
You know these users. The ones where you say, "Right click on Outlook" and they first move the mouse around while searching for the Outlook icon on the desktop (hopefully it hasn't moved yet or be prepared to wait 5 more minutes, unless you have the audacity to point it out for them), and then glance at the mouse to make sure they click the "right" button.
What's really sad, is that these people are often the sysadmins as well.
I really like this level of professional analysis. It's in-depth in a way I could never do. Having groups the size of Sun on board makes this possible. I think that is going to have a major impact on the advance of non-MS GUIs over the next few years.
Of course, the obvious question is why MS, with their size, hasn't produced the perfect GUI.
1Alpha7
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Hmmm. Yet Apple, who are known for actually giving a rat's ass about the Real Usability of their interface have had an Apple menu for the last 16 years and no one was so confused that they stopped using it. The all-purpose, one great menu really doesn't have a good name (although I agree that start makes at least as much sense as any alternatives) and the logo of the desktop maker is as good as any. Personally I prefer they not put a word on such a menu, since it's meaningless.
I do not have a signature
Actually, Microsoft does offer an option in Windows XP that allows you to setup the UI used in Windows 95 for those users who don't want the new Luna interface of Windows XP, which is quite different and does take some getting used to. Besides, the UI pioneered by Windows 95 is six years old, an old-timer by modern computing standards.
Sun's new studies on how the GNOME interface works in my opinion is a bit too ad hoc if they want to improve its look and feel.
They're several years behind what Microsoft has done with their famous Usability Lab. Look at the way Microsoft has designed Windows 95 interface that went into Windows 95/NT4/98/ME/2000; this is due to lots of hours of extensive scientific research into how people use their computers. It's also the reason why the interface of Internet Explorer 4.0 to 6.0 is way, way more polished than the interface of Netscape 6.0x (Netscape blew it big time by abandoning the interface used in Netscape Communicator 4.x versions, which was actually quite good).
What all the Linux supporters need to do is to fund the equivalent of the Microsoft Usability Lab for both KDE and GNOME. I'll guarantee that both KDE and GNOME will be much easier to use once some decent research is done on making the interface easier to use by end users.
Of course it makes sense! You're "kick starting" the system to turn on!
That makes more sense than a big assed "K" any day.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
Is sun still going to drop CDE for GNOME?
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1. Try Red Hat 7.1, it is much much better.
2. As far as windows being sucky being a form of job security: yes, but what you can do with Linux will amaze people. My boss and I are constantly amazed about what we can pull off replacing costly licenses with free stuff, that does the job better too.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Why ? because the strength of the KDE look-and-feel is that it's a close copy of Microsoft Windows, and this is good for 2 reasons :
People who can use Windows are not disoriented by KDE (rah rah, old argument, I know ...)
Microsoft being all about "first user experience" (read glass and chrome on a desktop anybody can use more or less intuitively), they probably spent a ton of money on the design of the Win95 interface, so why not reuse it ? It's far from perfect, but you can be pretty sure it'll be accessible to the mass thanks to M$ money, and KDE reuses all that R&D for free.
M$ is not stupid, and they've been reusing the same old clunky Win95 interface for years now. IMO, that's because they know for sure it's what flies with the users. So, I like Gnome, it seems solid and well built, but I'm sorry to say, it'll probably lose the GUI battle because its single biggest flaw is its non-M$ look-and-feel.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"This is ridiculous! The start button is a foot? What does a foot have to do with a start button?"
and
"Whoa? How come the settings are under something called "Settings"?? Where is the control panel?"
Microsoft has succeeded in making their own screwed up naming conventions the "standard" of computers everywhere.
In the future, will all UIs have to have start buttons, control panels and taskbars to be considered usable?
Quite frankly, I hope Linux never gets on the desktop. Instead of creating a Free implementation of the OpenStep specification, a proven system, people go off and create things like GNOME and KDE.
Yes, I'm fully aware of GNUstep, but that should've been done *before* GNOME and KDE.
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There is one big problem with having the menubar at the top of the screen.
If your window manager is in point-to-select mode, when you try to go to the menubar of your application you would inadvertently switch which window is the active window. Then the menubar would be for the wrong program.
Got friends?
Can anyone mirror this thing, or at least copy/paste it here?
None of the comments are all that suprising...
GUI enviroments simply aren't all that intuitive, period. There may be ways to make them more intuitive however this study, while interesting, appears to be more a measure of how similar to MS Windows, Gnome is.
This is not to say the study is without value. Certainly it is valuable, but agronomic design just isn't at a level where a user can sit down and intuit the functions in such a complex devide as a computer operating system. It just isn't possible. This is not a reflection on Gnome so much as a reflection on the study of agronomics.
That said, the study was a good read and did make valid points in it's recommendations. It's just important to keep in mind what was actually being analized.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
I often come in contact with users who are moving from old unix based terminals to windows based software. Many of these users have absolutely no GUI experience whatsoever.
There are similar "stumbling" blocks that various users hit when switching platforms -- either from a text-based unix terminal to GUI or from a MAC to WIN32, or whatever.
For most "work" environments, if the user knows how to "click" an icon to run his software, thats about all they NEED to know -- outside of how to operate their software package. It's silly to expect a 50+ y/o client services secretary from company X with no GUI experience to "master" any windows/mac-ish interface. Their "job" is to be able to navagate their software, launch it and shut it down. Beyond that is really expecting too much.
-jhon
If the same study was performed on the win32 desktop, by the same group, it would pass with flying colors.
This was a study of usability and familiarity. Like it or not, the win32 desktop is usable and familiar to Joe Average-computer user. It is Gnome that, for most users, needs the changing to make it friendly.
Personally, I like Gnome (and KDE) much more than the win32 interface, but it's because I'm used to them. To appeal to the wider audience, changes will have to be made to make it more like the familiar desktop, which in this case is Windows.
As for those in the audience who want a similar GUI study done on MS windows to see who comes out on top, I think you already know Windows will beat the pants off Gnome. However, you might see similar results if instead of just a bunch of icons on a bar at the bottom of the screen, there was actually some TEXT on them giving a first-glance explanation of what the thing does.
I bet the windows GUI would have gotten the same comments if they took the "START" text off the start button. However, if they took the text off but placed the task bar at the top of the screen, people would have gotten it. They would have been used to the Apple OS method of doing things and it would have been intuitive. Put a tiny Gnome footprint on the left corner of a taskbar at the top of the screen and the non-techies they had participating in the study probably would have gotten it.
Just yesterday, I finished a complete re-install for my Windows partition (I run a dual-boot system), after an unexpected shut-down resulted in corruption of a number of important .dll and .vxd files. ScanDisk in dos refused to correct the problem- "run the windows version" - I'd love to, but I can't boot into windows!!
I had to get a boot disk, my original CD, and use the "extract" program to get back the original .dlls, but even that wasn't enough. In the end, a complete reformat was required.
Linux on the other hand, seems to always recover fine (although a fsck is run)..
I guess my biggest complaint about Linux's recovery would be fsck, most of the time it works fine (automatically). Every now and then though it dumps you out to a recovery shell, and you have to finish it manually, answering stupid questions like:
move inode 34682 to /lost+found?
How the hell should I know what inode 34682 contains? Don't ask me these questions, just do it!
So I find myself using fsck -y, but then I wonder why this procedure isn't done automatically...
This scenario would be a nightmare for the recently converted windows user.. it REALLY needs to be made more user-friendly..
f u cn rd ths, u r prbbly a lsy spllr.
if the same study was performed on a win32 desktop.
I've always liked the context-sensitive global menu at the top of the Mac screen instead of having them be a part of the individual windows like MS does.
Apple UI studies found that it's easier to just throw the mouse to the top instead of aiming for the menu in a window. Apparently (rumor) MS would have also done one global menu at the top like Mac were it not for Apple patent issues? Does anyone know if that's true?
Otherwise, KDE does allow a Mac-like global menu in it's theme preferences, but it's more of an afterthought. If Apple patent issues can be avoided, perhaps Gnome should default to a singular Mac-like global menu at the top? (menus in windows would still be available as an option)
Thoughts anyone?
Do you philosophize about post-modern rationalism every day? Do you speak russian (or another non-native language) everyday? Have you ever called another car driver an idiot? I thought so. I work everyday with people who are very smart, but do really stupid things when it comes to computers. I'm not engaging in de-humanizing rhetoric or digital apartheid as you would believe.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
"Why do I need to press start to shutdown."
... mean?"
"What is the any key?"
"What does Fatal Exception in
"Press yes if you want to reboot."
"No, I didn't send you that email."
"Die clipply die."
"Click on this, right click on that, double click there, oops sorry press back."
"Why am I out of memory, I'm not running anything."
Users are dumb no matter what the OS.
What is pirate software? Software for inventory of stolen treasure?
Ever used german cordless phones or other products, their interfaces are totaly crappy/ designed by a rand() function
A lot of it is common sense, but many X developers would do well to go through the site. Fortunately the GTK pushes developers in the right direction (build the tools, and you can implicitly enforce the standards), but we still have a ways to go for GNOME to be as consistent as, say, Macs were in the late '90s.
Oh, and M$ bashers will have many opportunities for chuckles here. :-)
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
Having been around computers now for 16 years, I tend to feel pretty comfortable with the idea of seeing new things, and figuring them out. I learned on good old DOS on an 8088 with a *huge* 9 Megabyte drive. At the times of Windows 3.11 and 95, I was a bit of a purist and refused to give up my DOS prompt. Why switch? I can do everything I need from my prompt and more, my OS is better. Well a few years and a number of cool game releases later, I realized the stupidity of this stance. Change must happen. So I started learning Win98 and WinNT. Did a good job migrating, I now run NT based networks in my sleep. Then I decided to learn Linux, looked like a good system. I use the GNOME desktop. And I must agree with the results of this study. I found that: /., decide what is mainstream. And they like Windows. Most users aren't going to go through the learning curve if they don't have a compeling reason to do so. And the much touted stability of Linux isn't enough. The only way to attract users to Linux would be to create an interface that panders to what they know, and then, for the power users, allow it to be modified to hell and back. Maybe then we can use stability and power as reasons to get them off of their expensive Windows habit.
.rmps, they do help a lot). Once I got the sytax of the RPM command down to the point of usability, I then would spend hours running down dependancies, and dependancies for those dependancies, ad infinitum. Perhaps it is a function of my inexperience, but there really needs to be a smoother way to add stuff than to run down obscure and enigmatic packages, that I had no clue that I needed. The average end user wants to be able to download program XYZ, double click on it, and have it install. And again, if we want to see Linux go mainstream, it has to pander to that level of user.
1. Its not intuitive, sure Window's wasn't either, but its just plain dumb to ignore ease of use because someone else does. I thought the idea was to draw users away from M$, not drive them back to M$. The mass of geeks using Linux (quick note here: I am using Linux as an example, just because I have been exposed to it, I by no means am trying to promote it or demote other flavors of *nix) are not going to create enough of a market to make Linux mainstream. The *idiots*, as they are often called on
2. RH Linux 7.0 (what I learned on) is an absolute pain in the arse. I don't know how many hours I have spent trying to add various packages (I like the
3. This study wasn't about GNOME vs. Windows, it was simply a study of people's reactions when dumped into a GNOME environment. Kind of a simulation of a standard user being given an new work computer with GNOME. In a way, it can be seen as a fesability study for a company switching to GNOME from Windows. And the fact is, while it may have passed, it didn't excel. And what the conclusions of this study do is, point the way for GNOME to excel. If Linux is ever going to become a major competitor for windows, and not distant second, is by becoming average-user-friendly. That is the point of this study, can the current average use migrate to GNOME without a major hassle? Sadly, the answer was still no. So quit sticking your head in the sand and saying, windows is no better. This sort of attitude will make GNOME only as good as windows. The better attitude is, ok, we see the flaws, lets fix them. And if that means adopting some of M$'s ideas for layout, etc. then so be it. GNOME can still be far better.
4. Do we nessecarrly want everyone using Linux? Truth is, I kind of love Windows. Its so buggy and sometimes so hard to fix, that I get paid quite well to do it. We all complain about M$ and thier inferior products, but let's face it, many of us make a good living *because* windows sucks.
5. IANAEM (I Am Not An English Major) this post will contain. Grammer and spelling errors. And I don't really care enough to use a spell checquer.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
How is the GNOME menubar layout more familiar? If you are talking about the menu options and their placement (e.g. `copy' in the `edit' menu), then I would say they all have that menubar layout.
This reminds me of an airline anology where if you flew on Linux Airlines they gave you seat parts and a copy of seat-HOWTO.html, but once you had made your seat, it was very comfortable. Making the interface visually spare would make things easier for first time users, but once you got used to the environment, it would not be as comforable.
I can think of no justification for having non-intuitive icons if you can make other ones and have had enough time, but I haven't found KDE's icons non-intuitive. The GNOME icons are a whole lot prettier, though.
But in my opinion, KDE is a bit more usable for two reasons: the file manager is great, and there is a nice usable feel to it. GNOME is cool too, though.
this is exactly what the desktop in linux needs. i was recently flipping through O'Reilly's "Windows 98 Annoyances" (you'd expect the book to be thicker, but they used small typeface) and was reminded of Win9x's Reskit and TweakUI. these apps are abso-fucking-lutely essential for anyone who has to spend more than an hour per week in Win9x. tweakui is the more usefull one, but to get it in, you have to drop reskit onto HD first: Add/Remove Progs->Win Setup->have disk->win9x-cdrom\tools\reskit\ until you find reskit.inf and install that.
h tml
tweakui you can gank from http://www.annoyances.org/win98/features/tweakui.
ummm....get rid of that space in the html part of the address...
this isn't perfect (not nearly as tweakable as *nix,) but it's a hell of an improvement. essentially, it helps you tweak the reg w/o having to actually go into the reg, and helps make stuff that would be a lot harder done in regedit a basically point-and-click affair.
THAT SAID, there's a reason why gnome (and linux in general) isn't all peaches and cream! you're not supposed to be able to do everything via GUI! messing about with pictures isn't nearly as succint as giving specific arguments via command line/text editing. a picture can mean a thousand words, but a series of strictly defined words can only mean one thing when used in conjunction with each other.
linux on the desktop wont happen for a while, if ever, but a simpler desktop and setup can't be a bad idea.
-d.
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Slashdot: When News Breaks, We Give You The Pieces
FreeBSD for the impatient.
For people coming from a life of windows, linux can be a very scary world. I had problems from day one, (day one being not so long ago), just getting around to things. I wanted to set up my NIC and I was trying to figure out where i could go to Network Neighborhood, finally realizing there is no network neighborhood. Then there was changing the resolution...I rightclicked expecting to see Properties and go through that easy Windows process. NOTHING! That took some time too.
Granted I am not the smartest person in the world, but I am a CS major and computers are my life! I was so used to the Windows way of doing things that shifting over for just the easiest things took some time.
The worst part is that apparently unclean stoppage of Linux is a much worse prospect than Windows...I suppose it really isn't an issue because of Linux's supposed reliability...but if anyone hasn't yet simply turned their computer off accidently while running Linux....I dare you..
thats nice to hear... does it mean i can claim to have merrit in what i say? i wish they would do the same thing for windows (find some people who have never touched it) and see what GUI comes out ahead.
Almost all computers are used by people to do something useful. Their job for instance.
It's nice being an expert and knowing all this crap, but after all our job (generally) is just supplying someone with a tool. Something to do their job, download porn, buy books or play games. The global IT industry does not exist just for your mental stimulation.
Linux is better than the MS shite, but if people can't use it, they wont care. It may stay up for months rather than minutes, but stay up doing what?
Almost everyone in IT is so far up their own arse (oops - brit giveaway) that they've forgotten who ultimately pays the bills and why.
This sig made only from recycled ASCII