Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Online book for usability

[David Allouche]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 02:40:09PM +0900, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
> >>>>> "David" == David Allouche <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>     David> On Fri, Jun 18, 2004 at 02:27:05AM -0400, James Blackwell
>     David> wrote:
> 
>     >>> Tonight I bumped into an online book that covers usability
>     >>> with GUI programs.
> 
>     >>> Though arch isn't a gui program, enough of the concepts still
>     >>> apply that I'd like to humbly suggest that others may be
>     >>> interested in it.
> 
>     David> Interesting reading, thanks.
> 
> I'm curious what you found interesting about it.

Even though the (unquoted) rest of your message definitely sounded
trollish to me, I'll answer quickly because it has caused some
significant flaming activity.

I'm just very interested in all software user interfaces issues, I find
this an interesting field, and a field in which free software is often
weak. In particular, empirical evidence shows that Arch _has_ usability
problems and is confusing to new users.

Essentially, that paper says: "You may know, as an uber-geek, that your
tool is right and that new users get it wrong because the expect the
wrong thing. Still, what matters is your users, so you'd better consider
seriously whether doing the wrong thing user expects would not actually
be the right thing." But it says so is much more numerous words in order
to be convincing.

I am working with people who have to use Arch because that's what has
been chosen by the organization. And even if they generally agree that
Arch is a great and powerful tools, they are quite irritated by the fact
that the most common answer to a "X does not work" type of question is
"because you are doing the wrong thing".

Most people want to _do_ something which is not essential to the tool
they are using. When the tool goes in their way and try to force them to
change the way they work, their are frustrated, and may even become
aggressive.

That is the reason why untagged-source files are now "precious" instead
of "unrecognized". We may know that it is better to have
"untagged-source unrecognized" because it catches mistakes, but many
users just expect "untagged-source precious".

A similar example is "*.o" files being classified as unrecognized. We
know it's the right thing to do because it encourages using out of tree
builds, which are superior for a number of subtle reasons, but people
just expect them to be treated precious, for a number of (often
fallacious) reasons. Yet, though they are wrong, they are right because
they are users.

Ho, I'm sure you can come up with principled objections that all of that is
irrelevant, old-news, etc... That's not where my point lies.

Next time you have to explain something to a user who has read some
simple documentation, and that explanation has to be longer than one
phrase, or next time you have to answer a user something along the lines
of "you are doing the wrong thing", ask yourself whether burdening the
user with all that irrelevant (to the task at hand) information is worth
the trouble.


I-am-answering-you-even-though-you-are-a-troll'y yours.

-- 
                                                            -- ddaa