[521] in Athena User Interface
Re: minutes of 14dec2000 micromeeting
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Susan B. Jones)
Fri Dec 15 15:41:07 2000
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Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 15:41:03 -0500
To: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@mit.edu>
From: "Susan B. Jones" <sbjones@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Richard Tibbetts <tibbetts@mit.edu>, "t. belton" <tbelton@mit.edu>,
"andrew m. boardman" <amb@mit.edu>, aui@mit.edu
Thanks, Tibbetts for a very complete and understandable answer.
Wearing my usability hat and my I'm-a-chicken-crop, I am going to veto
adding this to this round of tests. I agree it does make the whole
business of testing far less exciting, but the week after the end of the
election season and the week before the solstice, who needs more
excitement?
Susan
At 3:29 PM -0500 12/15/2000, Richard Tibbetts wrote:
>On 12/15 "Susan B. Jones" <sbjones@MIT.EDU> wrote:
>> So is this a worthwhile thing to do as part of the usability test or is it
>> unnecessarily dangerous?
>
>I don't know if it is worthwhile or not.
>
>Changing their theme is probably the hardest and most dangerous thing
>that users will think of on their own. It is one of the more "cool"
>features of Gnome/Sawfish. It is the most significant customization a
>user can make using on the GUI, in general. So it may be important
>that users clearly understand what they are doing and how to revert
>back to their old setup. On the otehr hand, it may not be worth
>testing on unfamiliar users, since people usually don't get around to
>it until after they are fairly comfortable with the system.
>
>> Is theme an Athena thing? a UNIX thing? a Gnome thing? Is it something
>> that your run-of-the-mill Athena user knows about?
>
>Its not an Athena thing, and run-of-the-mill Athena users will not be
>aware of it. It is a relatively recent development, but more and more
>Unix (read Linux) applications are supporting themes (also called
>skins). You are probably best considering them a GNOME thing.
>
>GNOME has theme support, so that you can apply a theme and customize
>all of your applications consistently. GNOME themes tend to only
>change the visual appearance of the application, and do not touch
>functionality. Other individual programs support themes as well.
>Sawfish uses themes to modify look and behavior. Mozilla (the upcoming
>version of Netscape) has extensive theme support (calling them skins
>or chrome), which mostly effects the appearance and placement of buttons.
>
>They tend to be a relatively easy way (from the programmer's
>perspective) to give the user a whole lot of rope to hang themselves
>with. Users, especially Linux users, are coming to expect them as an
>easy way to dramatically customize their environment. Novice users are
>likely to be introduced to them by friends when they ask "How do you
>make your Athena account look like that?"
>
>tibbetts
>
>-*- http://www.mit.edu/~tibbetts -*- finger tibbetts@monk.mit.edu -*-
