No more right click terminal

[Jeff Spaleta]

On 7/13/05, Nicolas Mailhot <Nicolas.Mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
> What's specious the way all those changes are never backed by real user
> studies but by "we think best"

Are you willing to spend your time and money to conduct credible
studies?  I think you are being a wee bit unreasonable to expect that
every feature change must come with its own impact study.  I'm sure
the gnome usability team would absolutely love to see someone who
could dedicate every waking moment of their time surveying "real"
people to see how proposed changes impacted "real" workloads. I'd love
a pony, I'm sure the gnome usability team would love a workhorse,
especially one they didn't have to pay.

In broader strokes... I think gnome IS following lessons taken from
existing credible studies as they become available. I think Sun's 2001
study marked a turning point towards a general change to designing for
target users instead of designing for existing developers...and I've
seen no credible study offered anywhere that suggests gnome's changes
through the whole gnome 2 era are having a negative impact on the
target audience... and nothing but ancedotal grumbling from the
technical elite.  You and I live in the 0.1% of the tail when it comes
to technical literacy.. our personal likes and dislikes weight not
heavily on the mean nor the median.

But if you are really interested in producing unbiased data.. I
suggest you follow the methodology laid out in the latest Novell
study,  purchase your own portable usability lab for $2K and hit the
shopping malls collecting data from normal people.  I suggest you get
in touch with the gnome usability team and co-ordinate your efforts
before you start hitting the street with your usability lab.

http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/usertesting.html


-jef"
3.3 nano-farad capacitor... 5 cents,
5 kilo-ohm resistor ... 10 cents, 
watching  megajoules of stored energy discharge through the outside of
your equipment cabinet, vaporize the ground strap and then arc through
the air burning a residual image into your retinas for the next 3
hours because your charging relay circuit did something very odd...
priceless
"spaleta