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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: feedback from the gnome usability study.
From:       Sébastien Biot <sebastien.biot () verizon ! net>
Date:       2001-07-26 4:53:21
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On Thursday 26 July 2001 12:09 am, Sheldon Lee Wen wrote:
> I agree that the picture
> of the file on the icon is much better, but it's the home part of it that
> may throw some people off. Would a picture of a hard-drive be better or
> more intuitive?

90% of the people I work with, who use some form of Windows 
95/98/NT/Whatever, have no idea what a hard drive  looks like so I can't 
imagine how this came to be considered intuitive to them. Yet I know that 
this is pretty much the standard for representing one's access to one's 
computer's filesystem and that somehow it is an acceptable symbol. It's quite 
a paradox. 

Ultimately though this doesn't seem to matter all that much because I believe 
that most people do _not_ think in terms of filesystem or file hierarchy. 
Either they access their files directly from the application they're 
currently using --so for instance if they're using MS Word, they'll be saving 
and opening their files from whatever default directory MS Word has setup for 
them-- or they'll be hunting down some drive letter; they're told that 
something is "on the L drive" so they'll look for an "L" and not so much for 
a drive. It could be an "L" directory or skull icon for all they seem to care.

It seems to me that a Unix /home directory is conceptually closer to a "My 
Documents"-type directory --again, thinking in Windows terms. It is _your_ 
share of the filesystem. Maybe we should be thinking along those line and 
"translate" the concept of "home" into something which expresses perhaps more 
clearly the notion of personal ownership associated with /home while playing 
down the underlying notion of filesystem and file hierarchy. Something maybe 
like "My files". Now I'm not saying that this is the wording to go with and I 
know that _I_ would hate it but to an inexperienced user it just might make 
more sense that way. 

Seb

Sebastien Biot <seb.biot@iname.com>
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