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List:       kde-panel-devel
Subject:    Ways of Plasma Questions
From:       Celeste Lyn Paul <celeste () kde ! org>
Date:       2008-07-24 14:24:58
Message-ID: 200807241024.58392.celeste () kde ! org
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Hi all,

I just finished reading "The ways of Plasma".  I assume that this is the 
latest inception of the desktop vision document. From the mailing lists, it 
seemed like a few people have been working on it over the past few months.

As a designer, I feel there is still a lot of information missing from this 
document.  I've learned the parts of the desktop (windows, icons, systray, 
etc.), but all of the information is either very conceptual or too specific.  
It doesn't give me any context in to how the system is supposed to work as a 
whole and what the user's role will be.  

Take for example, the Icons section.  I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take 
away from this section that will help me design a better Plasmoid. I'm I 
repurposing the document in to something it was never supposed to be?

The document also describes two use cases -- Maria and Carlos.  But for actual 
use, they are too incomplete to be useful to me.  They tell me what the 
user is doing, how they do it, but not why.  Knowing the why helps me solve 
problems. 

* Why did Mario create those categories (University, Hobbies, Private)?  Did 
she have too much information to deal with it all at once?  Or is she just a 
maximizer-organizer who likes to compartmentalize her life?  

* Why did Carlos create a document workspace?  Is this something he has been 
working on recently or over a long period of time?  Does he create work 
spaces for all of his activities or only some of them?  How many activities 
does he normally have going on and which ones make the cut to 
become "activities" on his desktop?

From what I gather, Plasma is trying to be a dashboard or portal for 
activities; activities being any combination of tasks involving one or more 
applications or documents over a period of time.  Instead of the user having 
to manage documents and applications separately and time and space, all the 
tools can be put in the same bucket, tray, container, whatever, which can be 
labeled, put to the side, and called on when the user wants to play with the 
stuff in that bucket.  

So basically, it a glorified shortcut manager with lots of cool and useful 
tools and looks pretty?  In the end, I think (I'm sure I will be corrected) I 
understand the vision of Plasma (what Plasma is trying to do), but I still 
don't understand the user's role in it.
  
Some user information useful to me as a designer which is currently missing 
from the Plasma documentation:

* What types of users are going to be using Plasma.  All of them.  If I change 
something for one user group, I need to know how it effects all the other 
user groups.

* What types of users are going to be taking advantage of non-defaults, so I 
know which user groups I can ignore when designing certain classes of 
functionality

* What are the kinds of things you can do with Plasma, and which user types 
will be likely to do them (related to the previous question).  Obviously not 
everyone is going to do everything.

* What are the parts of the Plasma desktop, their interactions, and their 
roles within a user's activities?  Are differnt users going to use the same 
parts of the desktop in different ways?

* What are some user scenarios and cases of some real-life activities.

These are the types of questions I am asking myself as I take a critical look 
at a UI or am trying to change or design a new one.  Are there answers for 
these questions?

As a side discussion, has anyone used, read, or generally found the 
results from user research interviews I did back in April useful?  Once the 
raw results came out, no one seemed to do anything with it further and so I 
stopped working on it.  It would be helpful to know what went wrong because I 
often do this type of activity with clients and they get a lot out of it.  
What was different for Plasma?  Did you not like the results?

~ Celeste
-- 
Celeste Lyn Paul
celeste@kde.org
KDE Usability Project
usability.kde.org
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