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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: OT: Intermediate users (was: Re: Taskbar:
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () kde ! org>
Date:       2004-01-23 15:53:20
Message-ID: 200401230853.20932.aseigo () kde ! org
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On January 23, 2004 02:59, Vedran Ljuboviĉ wrote:
> the power user. It's all those people in between, and it turns out that
> there's a lot of them. People that know just about as much on computers so
> that they don't want to throw all that knowledge away - and too little to
> derive some general knowledge on computers and OSes.
>
> Any interesting ideas on how to cater to that specific group of users?

as Michael said, we could simply clone what they already know. really, that's 
the only way to make them "comfortable". but "comfort" is not the best place 
for them or KDE, really, since they aren't comfortable with it because it's a 
good idea: they are comfortable with it because they've invested time into 
learning it, something most people don't want to do again.

where i'm working for 3 days of each week, we're slowly acclimatizing our 
rather advanced set of users[1] to Linux. they are very hesitant to change 
anything, and that includes their Windows application software (forget about 
changing the OS). basically, they dislike computers because they are usually 
in their way, but they can't work without them. they've risen to a certain 
level of competency and things more or less work, so they don't want anything 
to change.

however, we've been doing a bit of a social experiment: whenever there's a 
problem with the software, we fix it on a Linux/KDE system if at all 
possible. what was at first curiosity but extreme distrust is turning into 
interest and acceptance. by the end of the year, i wouldn't be surprised to 
see a change to Linux/KDE be something they'd _welcome_.

what i'm saying is that it's a social/psychological/cultural problem, and not 
one that we can fix or should address via the technology. we don't need to 
make it harder to transition to KDE than necessary, but shortchanging KDE 
won't really gain anything worthwhile in the long run.


[1] they are energy traders and as such use some pretty complex vertical 
software as well as really wring all the tricks out of Excel and Access.
most of them have 3 monitors, and some have more than one computer they deal 
with.

- -- 
Aaron J. Seigo
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