On Sun, Dec 21, 2008 at 12:59 AM, Matthew Saltzman wrote: > On Sat, 2008-12-20 at 18:36 -0500, Dimi Paun wrote: > >> And you know what? We *have* hard numbers! We know quite well the >> percentage of people using Windows and MacOSX. It is close to 95%. Every >> time I pointed that out it was completely ignored. > > And we know for sure that they use those OSes because they think that > the usability is superior? Not because practically every computer sold > comes with one or the other and most people still have no idea what > Linux, GNOME, or KDE is, much less are in a position to critique > usability? > >> >> I have presented a fairly tight argument why the default was not chosen >> wisely. Did I receive *one* decent counter argument? Stuff along the >> lines of "Come back with several solid usability studies" is just >> ludicrous. > > One thing I've been hoping to see in this discussion--but haven't--is a > citation of a serious usability study by *either* side. Are there *any* > such studies published in the open literature? Or are some of us just > assuming that MS and Apple must have done them and are keeping the > results secret for some reason? > -- > Matthew Saltzman > This reminds me of a recent discussion I had in the plasma-devel list of KDE. The topic was setting the default behavior (enable/disable) for grouping tasks in the taskbar. Without exception, everybody, that I talked about this subject in person regardless of what OS they use, disables task grouping. Moreover most people find that having this as default is insulting. I even found a HOWTO online that describes the way to disable this behavior on Windows. The HOWTO ended with a sentence in the lines of "... and enjoy feeling less retarded." Nevertheless, I am from a scientific community and most people I talk to do not represent a group of typical users. People from the plasma-devel list told me that such studies have been done in detail, and that's why MAC and Windows enabled task grouping as default and that's what KDE will do too. As a researcher, I do not believe in the studies done by these companies. They do not have scientific value. Do you remember the "research article" pubslihed by MS, claiming that maintaining a Windows server is cheaper than a Linux server? Didn't you laugh when/if you saw that article? This illustrates their understanding of doing research. This kind of research (setting the defaults) needs to be done by researchers, I am talking about statisticians, mathematicians, physicists. I offered my help in bringing in such a project to life in KDE, but I haven't got any responses. Maybe we should do such a project in Fedora. Since we are the ones who build the bridge between the developers and the users, we have the best sight of both sides. -Orcan -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
