Call for vote: Nautilus use Browser view for fedora 11

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Fri Dec 19 20:10:54 UTC 2008


On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 8:49 AM, Adam Williamson <adamwill at shaw.ca> wrote:
> I still think it would be valuable data to have. Knowing what
> preferences people actively dislike enough to change is a useful piece
> of information, surely.

"dislike" is a value judgement and an assumption.  "change" is what
you can record.... you have to then follow up and figure out "why" it
changed.  Don't assume you know why. First find out what people are
changing.  Then you have to try to profile real world users who
represent the design categories you were design for.  Then you have to
see of those people who correlate well with the target use cases are
making changes to the defaults and ask them "why".

It does not matter if 90% of the users who flip the default settings
to something else are distinctly NOT the design target.  It does not
matter if 90% of the people who are currently using GNOME flip the
default settings.  What matters is if the use cases you are targeting
with the defaults use the defaults.

You can not design for everyone.  You can not design for a majority of
people. All good design choices serve some minority of existing
preferences, and the rest of us adapt. You design for a set of usage
cases and you narrowly focus design adjustments based on feedback from
people who closely align with the usage case you are targetting.

The other valid question that people are not asking themselves is
this. Are you part of GNOME's target? If not why are you using GNOME?

Let me take a second and do what I love doing best, talking about me.
I know with great certainty that my usage patterns are not a use case
that any existing modern desktop relevant tools is going to design
for.  I am absolutely unrepresentative of the target audience that
GNOME is designing for.  Does it matter if I use spatial or not as a
design choice? Not a bit. Not one iota.  Like pretty much every other
computer tool or physical object I have to manipulate on a day to day
basis... none of them are designed for my breath-takingly large
intellect.  Everything I do is done inefficiently because of design
choices made to accommodate some aspect of the see of mediocrity in
which I swim.  Its a singular burden that I must bare.

So why do I use GNOME? Because I am equally sure that every other
desktop environment is going to suck for me in some other way.  Every
bikeshed serves equally well as shelter for my junk. I've no need to
haul my gear around to different bikesheds looking for the one I think
smells slightly better or has the freshest coat of paint.  But I do
like the smell of fresh paint. Don't you?

-jef"do you know where I put my car keys?"spaleta




More information about the fedora-devel-list mailing list