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Shuttleworth Suggests 1-Way Valve For User Experience Testing
darthcamaro writes "No surprise but Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has come out swinging in favor of the Linux desktop. Speaking at Linuxcon yesterday he detailed the things that he thinks Linux requires in order to win the desktop wars. Those include: co-ordinated software releases, better quality and design, some user experience testing and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*** up' too. During his keynote, he extended an invitation to any open source application to submit their software for testing by user-experience experts. The sessions would be recorded for posterity, and the developer would not be able to interact with the user. "'If the developer is in the room, they have to say nothing. It's the shut the f*** up protocol,' Shuttleworth said. 'You sit and watch someone struggle with the software that you've so lovingly produced.'"
Users always ruin the best software.
He knows what he's talking about. We don't need more RMS but more people like Shuttleworth. Pragmatically minded, not focused only on ideals. If somebody wants follow only ideas I suggest Green Peace or monastery.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
Ok, sounds like a cool idea. I would LOVE the Amarok2.x devs to sit in on that session.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
and oh yeah, a dose of 'shut the f*uck up' too.
Wow, it's a good thing that asterisk was there. Somebody might have seen something profane.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
I've done a bit of software dev here and there, and I've never had the luxury of being near the users when they first prop it open.
For that reason, I've developed a habit of showing a beta to a nearby co-worker, or a friend, and ask them "Check this out."
And when they say "What is it?" - I haven't done my job right.
Note to self. Stop shaking hands with Open Source developers...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Would you buy a car that didn't have a steering wheel? Sure, certain software vendors have set certain standards for software interfaces. But the user is king. It doesn't matter who trained the user what to expect, if the user expects something, you should tailor your software to their expectations. If you think it's the users job to learn your interface, the user is just going to keep using Windows because they don't want to spend time learning the Linux way of doing things. Respect your users time.
Sorry, the simple fact is there is no need for another desktop OS. Windows and Mac are fine. I don't know why people think Linux will _ever_ make headway in that space when there's no conceivable way it ever will.
Instead, how about focusing on being a workstation OS and a server OS?
Mr. RightSaidFred99, I think it's time for a big dose of, as Mr. Shuttleworth himself so elaborately expressed, shut the fuck up.
I am the lawn!
My biggest complaint about Linux on the desktop is the lack of a true universal UI
Not much of a problem though, for most people, Linux isn't Linux but a Linux distro, that is if you have Ubuntu, you get GNOME, if you have Kubuntu you get KDE. Similar to how you can either get Windows XP or Windows Vista/7 with different UIs.
and the difficulty in user software (a user should be able to run every application without tweaking text files)
Most user-level applications don't require you to tweak text files unless you need some obscure setting. A few "pro" level applications (as in, your going to be programming or know something about computers) use text files because they are easier to edit, debug and generally give support for a knowledgeable user.
and ease of administration
Compared to Windows, Linux administration is a breeze. A Linux system ran by a normal user who doesn't screw around as root, will remain stable. Simply going to a site can get you a virus in Windows. Because of this and the -large- amount of viruses on Windows, it is pretty much required to run a virus scan pretty often. With Linux, even if you are running a vulnerable everything, chances are you simply won't get a virus.
Plus, with Windows update you never know what you are going to get, "features" constantly creep in (remember the search bar that was a "critical update"?) and large changes are considered updates. It takes a lot more work administrating a small amount of Windows boxes compared to Linux.
When it achieves the same level or better of intuitiveness as Windows, then it can compete.
Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years. A lot of the Windows conventions have been -proven- to be counter intuitive and plain confusing (anyone else wonder why Add/Remove programs is called that even though you really can't add in any programs from there). Windows is terribly unfriendly, we just have gotten used to it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
... as a developer.
They basically have labs with one-way mirror. User is left alone in a sound-proof room and given a set of tasks to perform. Everything is recorded (including facial expressions and sound), and any developer can take a look at the test either from the adjacent room or from his/her workstation (using Windows Media Player). The only input the user gets is when he gets so confused he can't accomplish the task from the list. In which case the person conducting the test just says "next task" and that's it.
The experience is really humbling. You just realize that people out there are FAR, FAR less experienced with computers than you thought, and even working their email client is a challenge for most.
You make your assumptions on the basis of what's convenient for you. Guess what, people out there are not you, and what's good for you is torture for them (the inverse is often true, too).
We ended up redesigning the entire chunks of the UI sometimes, some features got cut, some scenarios overhauled. And in the end we still didn't do enough of usability testing (IMO), but such is life in commercial software development - you work against an arbitrary schedule.
This is easy:
Step 1- Get two identical rooms. Fill one with computers with your favorite Linux installed, the other with computers with Windows installed.
Step 2- Put a sign on the door reading "Mac Lab". Use large letters.
Step 3- Observe resulting behavior. Write paper. Profit!
(Before anyone gets offended, I think Macs are ok and used them a lot in the past, but think this would be an interesting experiment even though different than the op suggested.)
"Windows has not intuitiveness. The only reason why we think it has is because most people have been using it for 20 some odd years."
Exactly. Those old exclusivity agreements that MS insisted on are still paying off. People are used to MS, and anything different is "wrong".
Not to mention - Dell, Compaq, and other OEMS basically did all of MS hardware compatibility for them. Linux is still struggling to make some hardware work that was "designed for Windows".
Just a few years of unfair advantage can translate into decades of revenues.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I really doubt that could even come close to being the longest sentence ever posted on Slashdot, although it might possibly be the longest sentence put together without including any punctuation or obvious structure - the trick really to building an excessively, almost absurdly, long sentence is to first ensure that it contains plenty of subclauses to pad out the length, adding extra detail without becoming complete sentences in their own right, which allows you to keep adding words without bringing the sentence to an end, followed by the addition of plenty of un-necessary, redundant and absolutely preposterously worthless adjectives and further extra description, and then the final stage is to replace natural sentence breaks with connective words, commas and semi-colons to paper over the gaps between what would otherwise be separate sentences and keep the run-on flowing so that the sentence can just keep on growing and growing without any real limit or inhibition to further growth, save for the limiting factor of the author's patience with the endeavour.