[97] in Athena User Interface
Re: Startup Time; types of users
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Christopher D. Beland)
Fri Jun 2 19:33:19 2000
Message-Id: <200006022333.TAA10237@No-Whammies.mit.edu>
To: aui@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: The events that comprise the history of the universe.
Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 19:33:15 -0400
From: "Christopher D. Beland" <beland@MIT.EDU>
> Actually the GNOME people realized this and one of the more user
> visible changes is a status bar & info box that pops up while you
> are logging in.
I noticed that. They rock.
> Fundamentally I think that calling on Moore's Law to save us should
> be a last resort.
I agree. Though I think it would not be a "show stopper" if we got
the login time to "tolerable" levels on existing equipment and in a
few years it reached the ideal due to hardware upgrades. Personally,
I would define "tolerable" at around 30 seconds, assuming there's some
activity on the screen, and "ideal" at 7 or less.
> There is also a question of how long a "standard" Athena user takes
> to log in. I get the impression this is considerably longer, because
> many (most?) frequent users have changed their window manager and
> other things away from the defaults.
Good point.
I think I'm able to make some vague extrapolations from the survey
data we have, though more accurate figures might be obtained from
better surveys or dotfile checks.
Somewhere between 20% and 40% of users make simple changes to their
dotfiles. This includes things like what's in OLC answers - put up a
cool background, run some programs on startup, maybe even change your
window manger. About 30%-60% make no changes whatsoever. Probably
20-30% make extensive changes, on the order of what tibbetts and I
have done.
I think it's fairly clear that the extreme novice users are at least a
big a population as the other two, if not a plurality. These people,
who tend to prefer home Windows boxes and only use Athena if required
for classes or as a last resort to check their mail, should probably
be of greatest concern to us.
With regard to login times, I think the middle users might benefit
from an OLC stock answer on the topic of "how do I keep my login
fast?" and with suggestions like don't add ten million lockers, don't
start a ton of programs you don't need, and maybe some GNOME-specific
things.
One thing that could really help the two more sophisticated groups
would be an easy way to start GNOME *after* login. (Like a command
that punts your window manager, then fires up Sawfish, the panel,
etc.)
The current default Athena login and the "terminal-style login" are
also available as "fast" alternatives, though based on survey results,
I suspect the current xlogin configuration is rather ineffective at
advertising this. I would definitely recommend that the login screen
be redesigned to make these options more prominent and clearer. (I
suspect most people don't actually know what "terminal-style login"
will get them.)
The ideal case would be if we could get the GNOME login to be as fast
as current Athena, of course, which would reduce the need for such an
alternative.
Probably more important in terms of speed, is performance *during* the
login, which I think has a much greater impact on user satisfaction.
GNOME seems to do OK here, as long as you don't have too many things
weighing it down. There are also some productivity and satisfaction
gains from using an intuitive graphical tool (like for a file manager
or startup menu), rather than the command line, at least for the
70-80% of users who prefer the Windows or Mac interfaces. The
die-hard keyboarders we can perhaps offer some keyboard shortcuts, or
at the least stay out of their way.
Personally, I'd like to see an Athena interface where it's possible to
do anything this 70-80% majority might want to do without ever
touching the command line. (Or reading a single manpage. Actual
readable web docs are OK, and even desired.) It pains me to watch even
talented programmers fail to be able to untar archives or navigate
resultant subdirectories without stumbling over (to me) familiar Unix
commands. (And this is why I'm so glad we're bringing on the
graphical file manager...hopefully we can also get click-and-drool
file "opening" working too...)
Anyway, more useful statistical tidbits will be coming as they become
relevent and/or I have time to publish them. And remember boys and
girls, 35.8% of all statistics are false. 9)
-Beland
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Christopher Beland - http://web.mit.edu/beland/www/contact.html
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