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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Show desktop behaviour
From:       Zak Jensen <coolguyzak () gmail ! com>
Date:       2005-09-30 16:28:57
Message-ID: 21bb44f30509300928j1e493171ob0b82d4a69c23d6a () mail ! gmail ! com
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On 9/30/05, Diego Moya <turingt@gmail.com> wrote:
> This is getting too big - I'll try to stick to the point.

Yeh, I will too. Where possible, I'll provide links instead of full discussion.

> On 30/09/05, Zak Jensen <coolguyzak@gmail.com> wrote:
> Two main problems with the metaphor are
> 1- the volumes of information handled nowadays with computers far
> exceed those of a paper office. You can handle hundreds - even
> thousands of files on a working session.

Correct, but most studies (that I have seen) suggest that users only
look directly at 1 or 2 documents at a time (generally). Whether this
is because of the constraints of the desktop, or the way people handle
multitasking is debatable. So, while I may handle 100 different files
in a session, I won't need to worry about dealing with all of them at
once.

In addition, we should consider how each of those files are used. I
could easially listen to 300 songs in a single session. However, I
don't typically consider them to be desktop related. In my opinion,
music/audio/video should have a default storage location external the
the desktop, or at least be automatically delegated to a folder within
it. I'm not sure what grandma thinks though.

> 2- a computer desktop is way too small! A physical desktop is usually
> 1.5 meter wide x 0.8 m long. Screens are usually 19'' at most. The
> physical equivalent of working on a 19'' desktop would be putting your
> documents layered on top of the pen, the clock, and all the other
> documents. Even if you have a magic button that instantly removes
> everything, any task that involves moving things from one document to
> other or to the desktop is a pain of if you have more than one or two
> documents open at once. This is how I see the desktop metaphor working
> today on computers. We should have magic tools much, much better that
> simply a "remove everything" one.

It seems that you are talking about open documents (actively viewed)
as opposed to a stack of papers. The stack of papers is the clutter of
files on the desktop. Meanwhile, the active documents (the ones
resting on my blotter) are the windows. This is only from my
experience, but I rarely see people working with more than 2 "active
documents" at once, whether on a physical or virtual medium.

Most other things they look at are the passive type--changing the
channel on the TV or the station on the radio. Others are of the "when
its needed" type, such as talking on the phone or answering it when it
rings. Of course, developers and computer experts tend to break this
paradigm. Again, something that might be worth investigating.

> > And, just like a real desk, my desktop can become cluttered, and
> > occasionally needs to be cleaned. This real-world crossover seems to
> > work very well. Very few people I know fail to see the parallel.
>
> Furthermore, in the physical world when you want to archive things you
> don't do it on the desktop! You move to a different area - a shelf or
> a cabinet. With the file manager metaphor, you would take the physical
> drawers out of the cabinet and resting them on the top of the table -
> and then moving the folders in and out from the drawer to the desktop.

Well, the concept of a cabinet is 3-dimensional. In a sense, one is
extending a "desktop layer" which is external to the working surface.
Since we only have 2 dimensions, and the working surface is the only
thing we can display on, we cannot yet apply this to the desktop
metaphor. Regardless of the mechanism we attempt to create, the
"cabinet" will need to be displayed on our working surface.

> I have mixed feelings. I'm not against the idea of a universal
> container - quite contrarily, I feel that current the implementation
> of the kicker panels + desktop is not universal enough, different
> areas behave differently (which should not happen).

Agreed. Luckily, this behavior will be "fixed" with plasma. Of course,
one can still consider panels as breaking the paradigm, if they don't
allow windows to cover them. At least at that point, it will be the
user's decision though.

> My concern is that the user can't really organize groups of functions
> other than with their physical position on screen. There are no
> folders for applets - containers that can be opened, hidden, tagged
> and hierarchically nested. If your mother wants to organize different
> groups of items, she'll have to put some the application launchers on
> the top-left, the bank documents on the right, and the photos at the
> bottom. And this is quite fragile - accidentally click on the "sort by
> type" option and this classification is destroyed.

http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/topic,238.0
http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/topic,158.0
(Read both pages of the "design mode" thread. I posted a rough mockup
on the 2nd page).

> My other concern is, if the desktop is that good, why can't you have
> several of them? Virtual desktops don't qualify because they only
> affect open windows. Both the desktop contents and the peripheral
> tools are the same on all the virtual desktops.  Why can't the user
> instead want to "hide the current browsing session" and then
> "temporarily move to the account desktop" containing the calculator
> applet, the spreadsheet and the banking files stored on (that) desktop
> all visible? These are higher level tasks than simply "hide all
> windows". The problem of the desktop metaphor is that it leads to too
> low-level micro-window-management tasks. You can't really define
> goal-oriented tasks easily.

Well, I think the solution will eventually include he marging of the
two concepts. A goal-oriented desktop design. Basically, the desktop
has its management struture, and the goal management integrates with
it. Maybe I'm crazy though. (It's definitely been suggested before ;)

I agree that separate desktops should be able to store different
plasmoids/files/etc. It becomes a logistial nightmare though. "Which
desktop was computer monitoring on? Oh, yeh. It's on the dev
desktop.", or other stuff like "Where did I store that file?".

> > > Buttons don't have goals, users do. Buttons performs functions. Does
> > > the function of the "show desktop" button help the user to accomplish
> > > her goals? If not, what other functions could it have or what other
> > > widgets could we design?
> >
> > Buttons have the goal to facilitate the goals and needs of a user.
>
> This is widget-oriented design, not user-oriented design. While you
> need some of the former if you're designing universal-purpose tools,
> you should never . It's better to have several flexible but
> specific-purpose tools available that a single tool with facilitates
> too low-level goals.

Touche/Agreed. On occasion, I miss the forest for the trees. ;)

> > Well, if we monitor certain actions of a user, and we make a few
> > assumptions, we can create a button that helps users instead of
> > getting in their way. What do I mean by this? Make the button do
> > different things based on the input that it recieves from the
> > environment.
>
> This probably is bad design - having a tool that does different things
> is the definition of "inconsistent". How will the user learn why
> sometimes the previous state is restored and other times it isn't?

Well, the show desktop tool doesn't perform different actions. The
desktop does different things dependent upon how you interact with it.
Eg. the *desktop* will re-maximize windows when you run an application
or open a file, but it will keep them shrunken when you interact with
a plasmoid or another "desktop" element.

> > If a user shows the desktop then opens a file/app, chances are they
> > want to edit/run the file--hence, it is safe to restore the prevous
> > workspace.
>
> How sure are you that this is safe? You could equally show an animated
> paperclip saying "It looks like you're editing a file" ;-)

True. I'm not sure how to respond to this. I know I would much rather
have 1 than the other, but I have no clue how to express it. (Maybe
there is no difference).

> Do you know the implications of trying to make an "intelligent" tool?
> Guessing user intent is really, really, really, no I mean really
> difficult (I know because this is what I do for my PhD, and it's no
> near to be a solved problem). You can make intelligent guesses as long
> as 1) the tool always behave the same given the same input, 2) you put
> your guesses as default values, 3) the user can easily override them.
> Otherwise the frequent "false positives" quickly turn into pain and
> hate.

Easy overridability would be the difficult part. The obvious solution
(to me) would be to provide several buttons (not by default) which
perform the action in a different manner. So, for instance, there
would be the intelligent button, the "minimize all windows" button,
etc.

> An alternative (and frequently better) approach is - don't guess at
> all, provide all the possibilities to the user and let her make the
> choice. This is what SymphonyOS does really well.

Yeh, as I said above ;) I want the intelligent option though. ;)

> > IMHO, the problem is that we are too afraid of confusing users, and so
> > we hobble our designs with largely unjustified constraints. That's
> > just one opinon out of many though.
>
> Maybe, but that's what user testing is for. Just design a prototype
> and throw it in front of them - this will validate or reject your
> carefully crafted guesses.

Quitely so. Even I noted that my suggestions were more educated guesses. ;)

> > People bring up Mezzo quite often on several of the usablity boards
> > and mailing lists I frequent... It does make the desktop simple and
> > easy to interact with, however it removes the reason why people use
> > KDE. It is neither powerful nor particularly configurable.
>
> Maybe the SymphonyOS implementation isn't configurable, but a
> Plasma-based one would certainly be. Users could add and mix any tool
> that they wanted anywhere, thus configuring it to their needs. Mezzo
> would just be the default configuration, a good one for beginners to
> stay with.

So, you're saying we provide default options of KDE, Mac, Win, and
Mezzo? Or replace KDE with the Mezzo clone?

> > Does this mean that I think such a thing should not be possible to do
> > in KDE? Of course not! But is it usable enough to make it a default?
> > Not in my opinion.
>
> Why not? I've tried to find that discussion to read those cons, and
> failed. Do you have the links?

Oops. Apparently I combined some stuff and came up with that. What I
was talking about doesn't exist. Largest complaint I've seen is that
it would be highly unfamiliar.
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