Re: [linux-audio-user] Opening up the discussion

From: tim hall <tech@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue Jul 26 2005 - 05:46:06 EEST

Last Monday 25 July 2005 19:34, Lee Revell was like:
> On Mon, 2005-07-25 at 10:46 +0200, Mario Lang wrote:
> > That is the point, I absolutely dont feel reading up on something
> > is necessarily a bad thing. My hair stand up if I watch
> > a typical no-clue windows user more or less randomly hitting
> > buttons in the interface until "something" works. I do feel this
> > "it has to work out of the box without me having to know anything
> > about it" attitude is childish.

Yes it's childish. However this is what the vast majority of 'normal' users
do. My son (who is himself, a child) does this with most new games for about
10 minutes and then turns round and says "Dad, how does this work?". To which
I answer calmly and patiently that I don't have a sweet Danny La Rue. Does he
ever read the manual? does he even go to the setup tab to find out how the
keybindings are set? Of course not.

> I disagree violently with this line of reasoning. Software should
> ALWAYS work the way the user expects it to unless there is a DAMN GOOD
> REASON, for example if you are offering a much more powerful interface
> than the user is used to.

Yeah, the spacebar should ALWAYS fire the big gun.

> For example, most apps (Firefox and IE) use "Ctrl-F" to 'Find in page'.
> Except Evolution, which forces you to use "Ctrl-S" to 'Find (Search) in
> page', because they have already bound Ctrl-F to 'Forward message'.
>
> This is a MAJOR usability bug; "We didn't feel like doing it the normal
> way" is NEVER a "good reason" for usability purposes.

Do you find that the developers respond well to being told this?-]

Most things that aren't understandable to a child are usually nonsense. It
follows that we must only send them to school for indoctrination purposes.

cheers,

tim hall
http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
Received on Tue Jul 26 08:15:11 2005

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