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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: feedback from the gnome usability study.
From:       "Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo () mountlinux ! com>
Date:       2001-07-26 9:42:07
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hi

> (An aside here.  I know the idea of different options for different user
> levels is not new, but I know it hasn't been done before.  The closest
> thing anybody's got is how Windows hides the less-frequently used options
> in the pull-down menus. I _don't_ know why that is.  It may be for the
> reasons above.  Any ideas from anyone?)

perhaps because they don't work (explaining why it hasn't been done before)? 
as to why it doesn't work, here are some of the reasons as i understand them 
(disclaimer: I am not a usability guru):

 o people are not uniformly "expert", "literate", "novice", etc. a person may 
know how to deal with email just fine, but be completely lost with a PIM. to 
be effective, each aspect of the desktop should have its own user level 
setting. this is an insane amount of work to get right and introduces a new 
complexity: how to allow someone to easily customize the user level in each 
component of the desktop to suit their experience and comforts.

 o if people are presented with a simpler version of the complex whole, they 
probably will never move on to experience the rest of the feature set. people 
use what they are presented with and most don't explore beyond that. 
therefore setting an environment to display just basic simplicities probably 
permenantly discounts the efforts put into the functionality not presented.

 o many users (including the novices) often find user level settings, such as 
the Windows menus that hide options, to be intrusive, annoying and worse than 
the alternatives.

 o it is possible to present a feature rich environment that is not so 
overwhelming or obtuse that people can't or don't want to begin using it

so in the end, for a lot more work put into creating effective user level 
settings you risk hamstringing the entire environment and don't stand to gain 
much in the way of usability. it does sound like a good idea at the outset 
however =)

-- 
Aaron Seigo
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