Ubuntu 10.10's installer looks rather nice

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

On 10/12/2010 02:52 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On 10/12/2010 02:16 PM, Dennis Jacobfeuerborn wrote:
>> On 10/12/2010 10:28 AM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>>>       Hi,
>>>
>>>> Striving for usability and pleasantness for the untechnical users certainly is
>>>> a good thing. It gets problematic when you choose to make things technically
>>>> inferior just to please those kind of users.
>>>
>>> We don't have to make things inferior to improve usability.  To stick
>>> with the "advanved storage" example:  IMHO the selection screen between
>>> basic and advanced storage is confusing and superfluous.  First it
>>> should probably be named "local storage" and "SAN storage".  Second
>>> anaconda can default to local storage if a local disk is present (option
>>> to add SAN storage needs to be there of course).  If no local disk is
>>> present it can go straight to SAN setup.  One screen and one mouse click
>>> less for most of the users.
>>
>> If you want to appeal to the same audience Ubuntu is going for then you
>> have to remove choice.
>
> Why? All that would be required would be to move it out of this
> audience's way (the "defaults").

Now we are really talking semantics. The point is that users should not be 
confronted with choices they don't really need to make or they don't 
understand.

> As Gerd mentioned in another mail, SUSE's installer seems interesting
> wrt. this. Its "defaults" cater the demands of "uneducated desktop
> installers", while still allows many kinds of complex setups outside of
> the "defaults" in "advanced menus".

As long as most of these defaults and menus are not displayed initially 
that would probably be fine.
The problem here is that every time you present the user with data dumps 
(e.g. lists of defaults) or menus you create a cognitive hurdle where the 
user wonders what he's supposed to do or gets worried that he breaks 
something. Minimizing that is really key to creating a streamlined 
installation interface.

The second aspect is that you want to talk to the user in terms of his 
"problem" and not in terms of the underlying technology. For example a user 
wants to either replace the current System completely or install the 
distribution into free space on his HD and but into either the old or the 
new installed system. The user doesn't care at all about "partitions", 
"LVM" or "mountpoints". This is different from the more apt user who wants 
to actually have control over these details (where exactly to put 
partition(s) on the disk for example).

The issue here is that keeping these advanced features available could have 
a negative impact on the "easy-mode" experience. If you manage to prevent 
that from happening than more power to you but if not then creating two 
distinct workflows is really the only option.

Regards,
   Dennis