On Wed, 2004-05-12 at 17:57 -0400, Will Cohen wrote:>
Lots of very encouraging stuff. Thanks Will. :-)
METRICS
Unfortunately, many people's metrics for desktop applications were literally eyeballed, click a menu item see how long it takes for the result to occur. This is difficult to automate and script. We really
A small comment: the only really meaningful metric from the user's point of view is "does it take too long?". This is a binary variable. It is of course totally subjective, but _that is the point_ --- "objective" considerations are not meaningful to users.
What I am trying to say is that (I humbly suggest) you face two problems: first finding the most pressing problems; and then fixing them. Objective metrics help with the second, but not the first.
True users only cares about "does it take too long?" However, developers need to know why it takes too long. There are a lot of possible causes. Just telling the developers this is too slow will point out the problem but does suggest any fixes to correct the problem. The metrics were for the benefit of the developers. Reading though my write up again I realize that I don't really have timing listed clearly as a metric. I will make sure that is explicit in the revision. Wall clock time is what we are trying to reduce.
Thanks for the comments.
-Will
Examples:
1) Clicking on the Nautilus desktop menu to open a terminal results in a noticeable delay before the window has appeared on the screen. For such a simple application it should be instantaneous (my rig is a 2,.4GHz Athlon with 767MB RAM).
2) Opening a PDF file with gv results in an instantaneous appearance of the window; using ggv takes about five seconds.
3) A noticeable delay starting gedit (same reasoning as per terminal).
I know that these "simple" apps hide hidden complexity due to their gnomeyness, but again, that is irrelevant to users.
I hope the above is useful. Please don't read it as bitching. I _love_ Fedora and GNOME, and I want to express my gratitude to those of you who have provided me with such an enjoyable computing environment.
cheers,
John
