unity-design team mailing list archive

["Stefanos A." <stapostol@xxxxxxxxx>]

2011/8/27 Jo-Erlend Schinstad <joerlend.schinstad@xxxxxxxxx>

>  Den 27. aug. 2011 19:10, skrev André Oliva:
>
> From my observations of classmates, fellow students and various other
>> users, I see roughly 2 categories of users (putting all nuances aside for
>> the moment):
>> - Those who do learn a lot by themselves by active exploration, by trying
>> things out to see what happens.
>> - Those who don't and tend to struggle even with what is being taught to
>> them step by step. They end up barely capable of following a few receipts,
>> but if there is any deviation, they are lost.
>>
>>
> If you're trying to tell me a that a student is unable to learn that you
> need to move the mouse to the upper-left corner of the screen when
> you want to close an application, then I simply don't believe you.
>

You obviously have never watched a psychology or philosophy major in front
of a computer, have you? No offense intended, but I support a lot of systems
and there *are* people who are not computer literate and do have a problem
with abstract concepts.


>
>  We can't make people read the manual, and not everybody has a friend
>> with past experience they can ask when they're stuck. How else are all
>> those people going to learn the interface?
>>
>
>
> We are talking about the upper-left corner. The manual you are talking
> about
> is this sentence: "to close a window, move the mouse to the upper-left
> corner
> to show the buttons and click the red one with an X on it". It's not like
> this is
> a very hard study requiring hours of reading. It takes less than a minute
> to
> explain and understand.
>
> How the people you are talking about have been able to use a computer,
> is far beyond my comprehension if they are unable to understand such a
> simple concept.
>

Indeed, it's difficult to understand until you meet such people face to
face. They do use computers, however, because they *need* to use computers.
Some may have been tought on a (paid) course 15 years ago; others may have
followed printed manuals ("the complete idiot's guid to ..." and the like).
They are not stupid, many are well-educated with good paying jobs, but they
do not care to explore a computer and learn about it in depth - they just
need to fire it up, fill in an online form and print a document.

To them, printing translates into "click the File menu, select "Print",
click "Ok" and wait for the paper to come out. They are people who don't
know the difference between the "minimize" and "close" buttons. Tell them to
open a new program and they ask you whether they should close all other
windows first. And should they meet a program without a File menu, they will
call you for help (how do I print in this new Office/IE/Firefox thing?)

I dread the moment I will be forced to upgrade any of them from 10.04 to
Unity with its invisible menus and window controls. It's a disaster waiting
to happen.

What can I say. Personally, I won't have difficulty adapting to the new
system, as I didn't have with the global menus (despite their problems on
Linux, where they are window-based instead of application-based) or the
"buttons on left" change. However, I know very well indeed that people do
have genuine difficulty adapting to these wanton changes. If there is any
will left to support such users in Ubuntu, we will have to be a little more
careful than dismissing valid questions with "I can't believe anyone would
have a problem with this".