[808] in Athena User Interface
Re: Gnome-Athena usability re-assessment
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Janet Littell)
Mon Jun 25 15:05:09 2001
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Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 15:05:06 -0400
To: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@mit.edu>, kcahill@mit.edu
From: Janet Littell <jlittell@MIT.EDU>
Cc: aui@mit.edu, sbjones@mit.edu (Susan Jones)
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If you meet, it would be nice if Susan Jones could attend. She isn't
here this week, but may be available for a Thursday meeting next week
or after that.
Janet
>So Abby suggested to me the other day that it might be useful to get
>the braintrust together to re-evaluate the Gnome-Athena user interface
>(in terms of usability) now that it's almost ready to go to release.
>A lot of changes have been made since we originally did usability
>testing, including the removal of Nautilus, which was our biggest
>source of issues.
>
>In any case, I've pulled together a list of usability-related issues
>that I've personally been concerned about, which we could dispatch
>decisively one way or the other, and prioritize things we wanted done.
>
>Since more and more people are running Athena 9.0 every day, we are
>already getting good feedback. However, it would probably be useful
>to watch some incoming freshmen try to use the system for the first
>time, come August. It would be easy enough to do that just by sitting
>in W20 on the day all their Athena accounts go active, and ask random
>people if they wouldn't mind if someone from I/S looked over their
>shoulder. 8) But we could talk about that sort of thing, too, in a
>meeting.
>
>Speaking of such things, would a Thursday afternoon meeting be good
>for those people who would be interested in participating? Maybe
>around 2-ish?
>
>To get things rolling, then, here's my list. Feel free to add things
>you'd like to talk about. (Also feel free to suggest a different way
>of going about doing this; I'm just trying to go with the flow. 8)
>
>-B.
>
>P.S. - There are 9.0 machines available for experiementation in W92's
>test cluster, or an N42 machine or two could be converted if need be.
>
>---
>
> - Should we enable splashscreen feedback for launchers and menu
> items? If so, should it be for all programs, only those that start
> slowly on fast machines, or some other subset? (See
> aui[798]-[802].)
>
> - Should (i)nfo menu items open a new browser window for the user if
> they have already have one open, or should they reuse an existing
> window? (See testers[4777].)
>
> - Should the following programs be made available, either in a locker
> or in the release:
> - gMix (gnome-audio)
> - gtcd (gnome-audio)
> - gEdit
> (See aui[763].)
>
> - The broken link from the gnome-help-browser intro page (i.e. the
> missing Gnome Users' Guide, which is very hard to make work on
> Athena natively) can by fixed by repointing the broken link in
> /usr/athena/share/gnome/help/help-browser/C/default.html to
> http://www.labs.redhat.com/gug/users-guide/
>
> Is it worth it to fix this and put gnome-help-browser back on the
> menus? Do users get any benefit from a friendly GUI to man and
> info pages (which could be added separately)? Should the Gnome
> Users' Guide useful supplementary documentation, or will it only
> confuse people if it is accessible?
>
> - Is there any reason for zephyrs not to stack such that when you
> click them, they cycle through in chronological order?
>
> - I think a middle-click on a window's title bar should
> maximize/unmaximize it. (This would produce behavior consistent
> with Windows.) I've put together Lisp to do this and can formally
> submit the code as soon as I learn how to do cvs diffs properly.
>
> - Should we turn off the "feature" that gives focus to a new
> application window when it first appears? Beland opines: "It's
> really annoying to say, start Netscape, go type in Emacs for three
> minutes while it loads, and then have it steal keyboard focus in
> the middle of a word." In usability testing, users seemed to
> figure out very quickly that if an application wasn't responding to
> keystrokes, they should click on it and try again.
>
> - Should an entry be added to the Dash menu that will allow you to
> revert back to Gnome-Athena if you've changed? (I.e., delete
> ~/.athena_dash_login)? Perhaps also check your .environment to see
> if you need to change anything there? Or should users who do this
> be expected to follow instructions on the web or contact OLC?
>
>===============================================================
>Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
>MIT STS/Course 6 (EECS) - MIT Athena User Interface Project
>===============================================================
