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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Remove Home icon from Desktop (was Mini usability study)
From:       Ra1n <pk20it () yahoo ! it>
Date:       2004-09-29 12:11:44
Message-ID: 415AC31E.8090506 () yahoo ! it
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Uno Engborg wrote:
> Ra1n wrote:
> 
>> James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>>
>>> Uno Engborg wrote:
>>>
>>>> Maurizio Colucci wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I conducted a mini-usability study on a 60 year old italian user 
>>>>> (lawyer by profession), used to openoffice and Windows XP.
>>>>> His primary computer usage is word-processing (with both openoffice 
>>>>> writer and Word), home-video editing with pinnacle studio, cd 
>>>>> burning, web browsing, using digital cameras.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> - "what's this home folder? Where are my disks?" he didn't 
>>>>> understand how to access the files on the windows partition 
>>>>> (mounted in /win). When I showed him the "devices" tab in 
>>>>> konqueror's navigation panel, he said that wasn't the right place 
>>>>> to put the disks, and that "they should be the first thing you see 
>>>>> when you click home". When I explained the concepts of "mounting", 
>>>>> and the fact that the disks appear in a folder determined in suse's 
>>>>> YAST, he said it seemed complicated.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps its time to remove the home icon from the default desktop 
>>>> and instead present  a folder called "My Documents" or something 
>>>> similar.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Please not "My Documents", M$ probably patented that any way.
>>
>>
>> Why not something like "Personal Folder" or something similar just to 
>> make clear that it contains thing related to the user
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Probably OK,  but once again we should not try to be different from 
> Microsoft just for the sake of being different.  We should
> be different for the sake of being better. If we can't find a way that 
> is better, the Microsoft way at least have the advantage of
> being familliar to a large base of potential users.
> 

>>
>>
>> And having a "preferences" folder? where programs store personal 
>> settings? (maybe with an icon associated, but probably this should 
>> mean the presence of some metadata field associated to that file or dir)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure a preferences folder is needed.  $HOME could store such 
> file just like now.  The preferences should never be manipulated 
> manually, but rather by kcontrol that could be reached either through a 
> start-here:/// url or from the kcontrol itself in old fashioned KDE
> way.  Users should not have to modify text files to change their 
> settings they should have a nice GUI.  True, there are some old
> Unix programs that need to be configured through editing rcfiles in the 
> home directory.  However, If the user is knowlegable enough to
> know about these he will probably know how to open his favorite 
> texteditor and edit them wherever they are on the disk.
I've spoken of a preferences dir because I think that everything should 
remain in the old $HOME, and not add a $USR-HOME like someone pointed 
out, I think that as possible the standard unix filesystem Hierarchy 
should be respected, so  everythink related to the user (documents, 
files and preferences) should go into user $HOME, the preferences dir 
could be a KIO for program preferences, for examples it could show an 
icon for k3b that clicked opens up k3b prefs...myabe this point needs a 
bunch of new APIs, but it could be done.
For an example of a good structured homedir have a look at OSX ones.

Byez

Luca
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