[aklug] Re: Your thoughts -- simple GUI designs

I tend to agree with you. I know a lot of people that tend to get lost
if you give them more than: Browse Web; Send email.

Those people seem to only want to use Windows Notepad or Wordpad for
editing documents. The only time they ask about something more is when
someone sends them a MS Office document and they can't read it. They
don't want to edit it or anything. Just look at it and maybe print it.

I'm constantly amazed how many people won't even attempt to read it
until it's printed on paper. Then they staple it and put it in a file.
They often delete it off the computer at that point because now that
it's printed out, they no longer need it on the computer. If they want
to share it with someone, they run off copies on the copier.

Maybe that other stuff should just be hidden and then get turned on 1
item at a time as they get the hang of things.

Don't give it to them until they get curios enough to actually ask for
it.

On Sat, 2008-08-16 at 14:18 -0800, Christopher Howard wrote:
> I was musing on something today, and was curious about your thoughts...
> (I'm probably going to get banned from this list for all the unimportant
> e-mails I keep sending).
> I was looking at some screen shots of the eee pc, such as this one:
> http://www.featuredsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/snapshot1.png
> I also read an article a while ago (won't bother referencing it) that
> indicated that some people are attracted to the Linux GUIs of the
> mini-notebook and 'netbooks' because of their simple GUI, and even that
> Windows is "too complex" for some people.
> Me, I'm a big KDE fan (no nasty comments about that, please). I like
> many of its complexities.
> Many major distributions have several DE versions of their distro; for
> example, Ubuntu has Kubuntu and Fluxbuntu. Maybe these distributions
> should also consider putting out versions that use a really simple,
> 'dummy-style' GUI; they could be similar to that in the screen shot
> above, with tabs like 'work' and 'play', and big buttons like 'e-mail'
> and 'web-browsing'.
> And when I say simple, I don't necessarily mean minimalistic (like
> Fluxbuntu, where you can do a lot, but it takes a while to get things
> installed). But rather, simple in the senses of 'locked-down' and
> 'obvious' ease of use.
> Again, I wouldn't want to use a DE like that, but I can see how it might
> attract a lot of non-technical people to Linux.
>
>
> ---------
> To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>

---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
Received on Sat Aug 16 16:31:26 2008