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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: The art of not offering customization
From:       "Michael W. Collette" <metrol () metrol ! net>
Date:       2002-05-29 10:42:36
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On Wednesday 29 May 2002 02:48 am, Kristian Koehntopp wrote:
> On Wed, May 29, 2002 at 02:17:46AM -0600, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > Don't collect. Hide. And make a big "Unix Expert" switch, right at the
> > > top of all.
> >
> > <repeat>user levels are not a solution</repeat>
> >
> > when are we going to have that FAQ stuff up on the website so we can just
> > point people to a URL on this matter?
>
> Aaron, there is a lot of stuff that needs to go away, by
> default. Please find some beginner level user, preferably also a
> slow learner or a person of high age. Give them KDE 3, for the
> first time, and the observe. There is simply to much stuff, and
> to much action, and there are a lot of meaningless words.
>
> You can reason about that - it does not help. Observation helps
> to understand.
>
> Kristian

First off, that was a great write up you did on observing a user go through 
the paces.  I've had a chance to see a similar scenario myself, though I have 
a somewhat different take on all this.

I'm finding myself agreeing with Aaron (this is happening far too often) on 
the point about not having user levels.  Even with the users that you are 
describing, the problem isn't too many options.  Collectively none of us is 
smart enough to know what are the important options for even the most 
non-technical user.  What is important to one user does not translate into 
all, even if they are at the same technical level.  Humans are annoying in 
that way.

What is really at issue here, and perhaps the entirety of this group's 
mission, is if a user is finding what he/she is looking for where they might 
reasonably expect it.  The failure of Control Center in the case you 
described was that there wasn't a clear path to complete what the user wanted 
to do.

My favorite example of this is the old double-click setting issue that's been 
discussed on this list several times before.  This one snagged me for hours.  
It never even began to occur to me that you'd tell KDE to require a 
double-click from within the mouse prefernces.  To me, mouse settings involve 
click timing and movement speed.  This led me down the path of going through 
all the desktop, icon, and even Konqueror settings trying to find this 
bugger.

Today, even though I could probably give you a fair inventory of darn near 
everything in that Control Center, I still get "Panel" and "Taskbar" mixed 
up.  Too many years using Windows has my brain engraved with the notion that 
the two are one in the same.

Even in your example, the user wasn't so much thwarted by the variety of 
options as he was lost on where the option he wanted was.  "Make all fonts 
bigger" was the task he set out to do.  The failure here was having different 
font settings throughout different areas of the Control Center.

Then the user tried to get a handle on what icons are doing.  Again, this 
isn't a case of too many options, but the fact that they're spread out into 
areas based on the underlying program, rather than the single concept of 
"Icons".

Another great point concerned the notion of window "Behavior", "Decoration", 
"Style", and "Color".  Much of this is a single concept, yet is split into 
program groupings.  The present methodology was designed with programming 
flexibility in mind I'm sure.  Problem is, a user unfamiliar with what 
components are what is bound to be lost for a while.

I don't have any wonderful insights on how to make this all work properly for 
the new and experienced user.  I only wished to bring a slightly different 
perspective to the discussion, which has been quite interesting I might add.  
At some point KDE is going to have to leave behind the way settings are 
grouped today and move towards a more conceptual approach to how this is 
presented.  This will require both a technical and philosophical change to 
the Control Center.  Once we can come to an agreement on the direction, then 
the dirty work of deciding on, and implementing the mechanics of how this 
comes into play.  Even now, I don't know if we're there just yet.

Later on,
-- 
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark 
to read."
 - Groucho Marx
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