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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: What is obvious?; Context sensitive sidebars.
From:       Sven Burmeister <sven.burmeister () gmx ! net>
Date:       2005-03-15 9:58:41
Message-ID: 200503151105.42993.sven.burmeister () gmx ! net
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Hello, hello!

Am Montag, 14. März 2005 21:01 schrieb D. Moya:
> I'm afraid you've fallen into the trap of the "user levels" meme.
> There are several reasons why this compartment of interfaces into
> levels of expertise is a bad idea. Right from my mind now I can recall
> these:
> * A user may be beginner for some tasks, and expert for others.
> * It is difficult to say whether a user is novice or expert, even for
> oneself. * Users learn. When a user has used an application for a while, is
> at ease with it and want access to the advanced functions, dropping her
> into a changed interface (the one for the next expertise level) would be a
> terrible thing to do.
> * How do you categorize expert users on rarely/seldom used
> applications? You can't expect them to remember the details of an app
> used several months ago, but the user want to accomplish expert tasks,
> not just the basics. (These are called "transient" applications, and
> there are specific design tips to create them).

That article talks about clusters of user knowledge, so there are levels, 
whether you call them clusters or user groups does not really matter. 
Obviously users have more knowledge in some applications than in others, or 
to be more precise, have more knowledge about some functionality groups 
within some applications than others. A user that knows how to copy, knows 
how to move, rename, delete, open with too. Same goes for playing Audio CD 
and Video CD and that group of functionality.
I doubt that there is one GUI to fit them all, and the GUI that comes closest 
to fitting all users needs is a full-time job and very difficult to create, 
as the article points out. The author does not really tell us how, but to use 
field studies, can KDE developers do that? Would it not be easier, to group 
functionality within applications and allow to switch profiles for these 
groups. So the only thing a user would have to know is, that if s/he does not 
find the currently dispalyed information/buttons/GUI in general intuitive, 
one has to press a button to let the GUI step back one cluster.

Obviously I would welcome that KDE would get the perfect, field-study driven, 
scientifically researched GUI, yet that would need people who do that kind of 
work as a hobby, as there is no: Ten easy steps to a GUI that fits them all. 
So who is competent enough and has time to take up that field work? Or are we 
just going to guess what most KDE users would find intuitive and copy from 
things that we think to be intuitive?

Sven
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