The aristocratic desktop (part 1)
Le dimanche, août 31 2008, 19:56 :: advocacy, gnome, ubuntu, usability, :: Lien permanent
Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME!
The terrific world of computers
Geeks like me are used to compare operating systems and desktop environments, discussing the benefits of one over the others. But, most than often, we loose the big picture and forget about the users.
I mean : "the real-life users", those who cannot even grasp the basic concepts and who use a computer because they have no choice. Some geeks would say that "it's good for them to learn" but I really disagree. Everyday I see very bright people who need to have their emails printed out on hard paper so they can read them or who cannot understand the difference between the "minimize" and the "close" button on a window.
It seems so hard
It is real : most users are simply lost in a terrific world where newspapers talk about "virus" and "hackers" all the time. They are even afraid to sit in front of their own computer ! If something popup on the screen, they panic and loose all common sense. "Do you want to save this file ? Yes or no ?" and they scream : "What do I do ? What do I have to do ? Please tell me ! I'm afraid that, if I click on the bad button, the computer will explode"[1].
Notes
[1] Then, they simply close the message using the little cross so the computer make the decision for them. By observing a normal user, you discover that 99% of the errors are simply not needed.
Less does not sell
It's a hard job but we could imagine an user-friendly operating system. Currently, when a user do a mistake, the computer or the engineer tell him that he's wrong and he should learn how do to it correctly. It takes its root so deeply in the engineering culture that, very often, the computer understand what you want and explain you how to do it in an error... instead of doing it ! "I understand that you want to enter your phone number and that you entered a dot between the groups of digits but I will only accept your phone number if you manually remove the dots, lazy looser !".
Look at your car or at your drying machine. If they are new, chances are that they have a lot of buttons, of tiny screens everywhere, emitting some "beeps" nearly all of the time. If you are not a geek, chances are that you fought hard with it the first days and now you are using only the two or three buttons you know. If a child press some random button, you will observe a totally unexpected behaviour and blame the child : "Don't touch this ! See, you broke the system !". But the only one to blame is, for sure, the engineer who designed it.
If we would make a really user friendly system, we should listen to the users and watch them. And we should adapt the system to them.
Unfortunately, it would also mean removing a lot of not very useful stuffs. It would mean putting just what is really needed in front of the user, so nearly nothing. And less do not sell. "Easier to use" is just one line in a product description while you could add a lot of lines like "extra feature to draw 3D graphics" and "including a semi-intelligent stochastic handling protocol".
But, most of the time, free software don't sell either. So why not make things easy ? Take the opportunities to make a really user-friendly system. We should target a typical newcomer to the computer world.
Let me introduce you Marie. She's 58 and she's a very famous mathematician. She was using computers with punched cards when she was a teenager. Things change and she now has difficulties to adapt. Her email is checked by her assistant who print them so she can read. She often reply by phone because it's easier. The university provides her with a new computer every year but if she turn it on, she receive a lot of warning and the IT department is all the time very angry at her because of "viruses".
Another normal user is Jean. He's 75 and has never used a computer before. He doesn't even now the mouse paradigm. He was a brilliant biologist and he likes to read scientific books. He has bad eyes and his hand is shaking. His nephew is his sole family and will soon leave the country to work overseas. Jean want to use a computer to keep contact with him and receive picture of his nephew.
Let's make a deskop who will be simple, efficient, elegant, pure for Jean and Marie but without having to teach them a lot of concept. Let's make an aristocratic desktop !
Changing our habits, step by step
Well, I will not invent a whole new paradigm for computing. Nor will I show you a lot of fancy mockups. Just explain you a few options I use everyday.
I've helped and I still help a lot of Jean and Marie, from 7 to 87. Some of them were using computers for 20 years, some of them were proud to tell me that the keyboard was nearly identical to their old typewriter. All of them were completely lost in front of a computer and most of them don't want to learn, they want to use the tool.
My first step was, for all of them, to install Ubuntu with the Gnome Desktop. In my experience, it's the easier desktop to use by default. I only speak about "easy" so don't start a troll with your favorite desktop please[1]. One thing I'm sure, anyway, is that Windows is completely unusable for any sane person who want to "use" its computer. So far, I believe I was right because for 100% of the people I helped, switching them to Ubuntu divided the problem rate by at least a factor 10.
Still, there was some issues. And I discovered that some very basic concepts are harder to understand than I thought. Double-click, a window, a folder, the desktop, the taskbar, the trayicon. I also discovered that some users were using a computer for ten years without even understanding the minimize function for a window ! The only way to switch between a web page and a word processor was to close one and then opening the other. It was seen as normal !
Simple thing
Sometime, they were asking me : "why is it like this and not like that ?" and I wasn't able to answer.
I discovered that changing a few options in the Gnome desktop helped them a lot. Then, I discovered that, even for me, it was easier to use. I will share that with you by writing a few posts, one about each option.
You might not like them. You might fight against the idea that those option are useful. I met some really hard resistance when trying to convince hardcore computer users. But normal users were all delighted.
Remember : it's not about you, it's not about your computer usage. It's about having a sensible default. It's about making stuff easy for your grand-mother. We all agree that Vim and Emacs are very useful and very efficient software (depending of your number of fingers) but nobody will every think about teaching one of them to your grand-father the day he discover his first keyboard !
Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME!
Disclaimer : Jean and Marie are fictive persons and the pictures were found on Wikimedia (clic on it for the source). Anyway, Jean and Marie are inspired by existing persons and all the facts described in this text are true and really happened.
Notes
[1] And I choosed Ubuntu because I'm more familiar with it. No need to defend your distribution, it's a pure personnal choise
Commentaires
Thanks for sharing your user experience. It's always interesting and I'm looking forward to your next articles about Gnome functionalities!
Sometimes it's just necessary to make a choice for the user. That's why I like Ubuntu: it comes with a word processor, an image manipulation program, a web browser, you can watch videos, photos and do the basic stuff very easily without installing anything. It's still a bit complicated for the beginner, but at least it's usable...
When my aunt left for Reunion Island, the only way she had to keep in touch with my grandmother was the phone but it was very expensive. Then they started using a fax system. After explaining to my grandmother how it worked, everything went fine (except all the problems she had with the system, because it went down a couple of times). I started to imagine a very simple system that could help her to communicate with my aunt, but at that time I barely knew Linux, and I think using a keyboard would have been to difficult for my grandmother... I should think about this again! But without any mouse or keyboard, it's very hard to think the Web paradigm!
Ouais, c'est plein de vérités tout ça.
Je me réjouis de voir ta liste de changements.
(et contacte moi sur jabber un d'ces quatres pour que je te fasse une petite correction)
"that 99% of the errors are simple not needed."
simply?
"You might fight the idea that those option are useful."
not?
I completly agree with this post, but even gnome seems not enough simple, and the internet is a real mess that we can't escape, I had a hard time explaining my grand mother what is a tab, and even the difference beetween the firefox buttons, and the internet ones.
The eeepc xandros interface is a good effort in the right direction, but yes for a power user it's really too arsh to throw away all that, I really understand that vim is not suited for my parents and even for average power user, but hell if I can live without it now!
I think the main reason there is few open source effort to do "the simple thing" is that it's not fun, creating a desktop environment that you would hate to use require a very hard dedication. And if you just hide an xterm in it "just for you" you'll never be sure that everything is ok without it...
But yes it would be worth the effort.
(sorry for my crappy english)
OK with the main idea, but we should not fall in the opposite excess. I think that, ideally, the user should know what he really does, which implies some learning.
I also think that the computer world is quite an exception. I've the impression that, now, the user expects something easier to use when it's from computer than when it's from any other stuffs (everybody agree with the fact that if I want to drive, I have to learn and pass the driving license. But why some users complains: "I have to learn to use computer, it sucks"?). Sure, simplifications can (or should?) be made. But if the user doesn't understand the main concepts, it's difficult to build an efficient tool.
So, in conclusion, I totally agree with you, but I just want to emphasize (and I don't said that you've said the opposite :) ) that the "the user doesn't have anything to learn" is for me inaccessible (and maybe dangerous, because exploitable by virus, ...).
Ploum, c'est normal que ton post en anglais apparaisse sur le planet-libre.fr ?
(juste au cas ou, perso, ça ne me dérange pas...)
One idea that might help is to make a separate system for every activity. For example, make a "Typewriter Ubuntu" :-) that is _only_ a typewriter, but a really good one. You can type texts, they are saved on disk, and you can print them. Very limited functionality, but it could probably boot _really_ fast, and wouldn't need a window manager (because there's just one window on the screen) or a shutdown menu (because you can shut it down all the time, because all key strokes are saved immediately).
"Marie" is actually Renate Künast, age 52 at the time of this writing, who is the co-chair of the German Green Party and used to be the German Minister for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection. I highly doubt she ever handled punch cards. I can't vouch for her not spreading viruses, though. ;-)
Taleel > Gasp, I wished that the two were unknown. But I needed two pictures under a free licence. Well, I hope that I don't have too many german readers :-)
j-c > I'm not sure that I agree with you. Indeed, right now we have to learn to drive and to learn how to use a computer. But that's only a workaround because of not good enough design. In both case. Ideally, the cars would only need to know were I want to go and go there. I would not have to learn anything. The same applies for computers.
The problem is that it's not always possible so engineers workaround that by providing a manual and teaching users how to use their product. But they took the habit of providing a manual and expecting the user "to know". And stuff becomes so "usual" that engineers will add complexity over it and users will refuse to see something easier because they took the time to learn something hard so they want to continue to use it the hard way. In Europe, mostly all cars have manual transmission because of this culture.
J'ai un fil d'expérimentations sur le sujet, assez basique :
Ubuntu pour votre grand mère (pour un usage simplissime)
forum.framasoft.org/viewt...
Il y a des choses qui passent mal dans Ubuntu par défaut : le double clic comme tu le signales, que je reconfigure toujours immédiatement en simple clic, mais aussi les deux tableaux de bord (d'autant que le tableau supérieur se confond avec la barre de menus des logiciels lancés en plein écran : quitte à garder un tableau de bord en haut il faut absolument changer sa couleur pour le différencier des fenêtres d'application, même si personnellement j'aurais tendance à trouver plus simple de n'en garder qu'un).
Une chose qui a bien fait avancer mon idéal d'un bureau simple c'est Ubuntu Netbook Remix [UNR] que j'utilise quotidiennement sur ma machine (qui n'est pourtant un netbook mais bénéficie d'un écran LCD 17"). La suppression de la fumeuse métaphore actuelle du bureau (voir Une nouvelle métaphore pour le bureau libre-et-ouvert.blogspot.... ) donne une cohérence extrême au système : toute manipulation de fichiers passe dorénavant par une fenêtre Nautilus (1) (ce qui rend d'ailleurs inutile la présence de la corbeille sur le bureau) ce qui est beaucoup plus clair à mon sens, tandis que le lanceur est ultra intuitif.
Une merveille, je vous dis.
(1) en mode non-spatial, configuré avec le panneau des raccourcis à gauche que l'on retrouve dans le panneau droit du lanceur d'UNR
First, the comparison between computer and driving licence was just to point out the strange fact: there is no big deal to learn to drive, but there is one to learn to use computer.
My point of view is: if there is no problem to learn to drive, there should be no problem to learn to use computer (but I agree, improvement can be done).
Your point of view (which I understand) is: there is also a "problem" when we have to learn to drive.
Secondly, maybe there is a difference between "knowing what I do" and "knowing how it works".
Things can be easy to use (like your futuristic car) but if you don't know what you do (for example, if you don't know what is the implication of putting another destination than the one where you want to go), of course, it doesn't work.
The problems that you've pointed out are of the same nature: Not understanding the difference between "minize" and "close", not understanding the difference between word processor and web page, .... -> they don't know what they do (it's easy to check. When they do the mistake, ask them what they do. They will answer: "I don't know" :) ).
To avoid that, they have to understand the main concepts (that means learning).
It's why I agree with you (we have to make things easier), but I still think that learning is mandatory (even if learning is easy, like for your futuristic car, but even if it is not).
Only a little difference between you and me:
For me, the better way to know what we do, it's to know how it works. Yes, it's more difficult, but it avoid some problems: I know an example of "you don't need to know how it works to use it": MS Windows. With the security and "dependency to the product" problems that we know (for me, these problems can be reduce, or even vanish, if people know what they do).
If we have to find the best way to make things work, I will not bet 1 million euros on your method (because not knowing how it works is for me source of problems), but neither on mine (because, as you said, knowing how it works requires a lot of learning). Anyway, I don't have 1 million euros.
Maybe this difference of point of view is due to the fact that I'm a physicist and you an engineer :)
Agreeing. With software design comes the opportunity to make perfectly intuitive things, we are not limited by technology in the same way, as above, cars are. However, there's a long way to go.
And by the way, manual cars does have several advantages, one of them fuel efficiency... But I do see your point. Because as a manual driver I instinctively jump to defend it, and must confess to having the notion that "those who cannot use manual don't know how to drive", silly maybe, but I still can't loose it.
Ubuntu is, I would say, still geared towards the manual drivers, even though it's not made out to be. In my opinion, care has to be taken to not trade efficiency for simplicity, Because this means less incentive for experienced people to develop/test it. If ubuntu's user-base was only computer-beginners... (Hey, let's make this new drivative distribution "Simpluntu"... )
This attitude, taken to its logical extreme, is why I left GNOME and why I can't use it for more than 5 minutes without screaming.
I last 15 minutes in Vista.
Personally, I don't like mouse-drived graphical desktops. I miss the days of REPL beng the first thing you saw, and what you entered was code, with hooks to work the hardware (e g load code from a disk, be it assembly, or code native to the interpereter).
However, the fact the GNOME FIGHTS any customisation through the GUI and forces you into Regedi... I mean gconf to make further changes... Meh.
I don't think a gui that is good for people who don't know how (and don't want to know how) to use the tool should not be the default.
It sets a bad precedent. The 'black box behind the windows,' "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" attitude is why even a power user of Windows laughs at people using a prompt.
I mainly browse the web, listen to music, watch videos, and chat with friends on the internet. I also manage photos and home movies.
I sound like an 'average user' on the surface. I have the needs of a soccer mom.
The fact of the matter is I do half of this in GNU Emacs and the rest in things like Conkeror, urxvt, feh, gliv and SMplayer. The most gui-capable are gliv and SMplayer. The guis are turned off, smplayer has almost all custom key commands.
I have 2 Control, 2 Meta, Alternate, Hyper and Super keys defined in xmodmap, and my left control is where the caps-lock is.
It wouldn't be hard to set a 'simple-mode' version of most things, that is baby-easy and has total control of what's under the hood, abstracted from the user. Making that the only way is a mistake.
I find that many GNU tools are black/white on this.
The guis are "my way or the highway" and non-configrable.
The command-line tools are intimidatingly full of options.
There needs to be compromise.
I'll be blunt : if you can't learn how to use ubuntu or windows xp or macosx, you're not a normal user.
But it's ok, because we are all different. Different people, different solutions : www.zdnet.fr/actualites/i...
Just because some people can't walk, doesn't mean we all have to use wheelchairs. It just means that we have to offer alternatives to stairs (ramps, elevator, ...).
Mouais, t’écris mieux quand tu le fais en français…
Thanks for your article I can't wait for your tricks!
From my experience there are 3 basic things that new Ubuntu user find difficult to do:
1. Shutdown the computer
Yes it does sound stupid but this is the number question I had from my family. It was before the red button was added at the top right of the Desktop - which is a very good move - but I believe the button is still not obvious enough.
--> my opinion: there should have a big visible button on the desktop called "shutdown" that will do just that. Non geek people don't hibernate computers if you see what I mean...
2. Install new software
Gnome-app-install is an excellent and very usable GUI (minus the lack of localization). But nobody uses it. The name in the menu is too long (in French only "add/remove..." is displayed) and people using Windows are "trained" not to use "add/ remove"...
This application needs much more visibility: again a big button n the desktop called "install new software" (uninstall is obvious and anyway non geek never uninstall anything...)
3. unmount USB stick
This is something I always failed to understand: any mounted USB disk will be unmounted eventually. Why on earth the unmount feature is hidden in a second level menu of an unexplicit icon on the desktop?
Windows user looks for a green icon in the corner and fail, first time compuer user don't have a single clue about what and how do it. They only get a freaky long warning message...
The nautilus window that auto open should have a big visible "unplug" button on it! Yes "mount" means nothing to a non geek...
I do believe that you are right to think about easier interface and there is quite a large room for improvement!
Bonjour, je partage l'avis de grand chauve: Non informaticien, mais power user de windows depuis 3.1 (j'ai commencé à 13 ans) j'ai installé hardy heron en live-cd. J'avais vraiment envie de tester linux et de chercher une alternative à Vista, après avoir peu à peu remplacé tous mes softs microsoft ou piratés (ou les deux...) par du gratuit, pour l'essentiel de l'open source (openoffice.org, vlc, izarc, firefox, thunderbird, etc.).
Hardy Heron a tenu une semaine sur mon PC. Il était livré en français, mais avec un firefox anglais. J'ai cherché désespérément comment télécharger la même version, mais localisée en français. J'ai du aller trainer sur une bonne dizaine de forums, lire des kilomètres de posts, apprendre qu'il faut passer par des lignes de commande (app-get ou un truc comme ça) pour récupérer les fichiers dans des containers (plus sur du terme exact), et essayer en vain de l'appliquer... Juste pour télécharger et installer firefox en français! Et je vous assure, je suis "le copain/fils/gendre/cousin" qu'une bonne vingtaine de personnes appelle quand il n'y a plus de connexion internet ou quand l'écran a de drôles de couleurs (prise vidéo mal enfoncée...). Je m'y connais vraiment très bien pour tous les petits et gros problèmes windows, je m'adapte très bien à des tonnes de softs professionnels sans lire la notice (personne n'aime lire une notice...), mais pas moyen d'importer dans ubuntu mes favoris, de comprendre pourquoi je ne pouvais plus lire mes fichiers stockés sur mon répertoire "mes documents" de vista, sur le même disque dur, ou télécharger une application que je connais par coeur...
Donc au revoir Ubuntu. Ca veut dire pour moi qu'on ne peut pas s'approprier un système Linux de ce type sans avoir quelqu'un qui vous montre tout partout. Ben Windows 3.1, à 13 ans, je l'ai découvert tout seul, sans problème. Est-ce que je suis devenu plus bête, ou est-ce que le système est devenu trop complexe ?...
Bon post en tout cas, qui ferait utilement réfléchir les designer d'ubuntu ou autre distro linux.
Pourquoi pas une interface à sélectionner, comme pas mal d'applications le font d'ailleurs: je me logge, il me propose 'débutant, normal, expert', et en fonction de mon choix, j'ai accès à 10 fonctions, 50 ou 1000 ? De cette façon, on apprend à maitriser les 10 principales, puis les 40 suivantes, puis celles qui restent dont on a effectivement besoin... Abondance de choix peut être paralysante...
Je ne pense pas que ce soit si dur à implémenter, et je n'aurais pas honte de me dire: je suis passé par le niveau débutant, ça m'a duré 5 jours, maintenant je maitrise bien ces fonctions et je me sens prêt pour le niveau supérieur... La progression est la base de tout apprentissage.
Ce qui m'agace, c'est que je me dis que je suis en plus sans doute la cible idéale imaginée par les chercheurs linux: le power user windows sans être inforamticien, sensibilisé au libre et qui en fait l'apologie pour les applications, qui a un vaste réseau de relations (pour qui l'ordi et internet sont des outils, pas des objets de passion...) qui peut tout à fait passer au libre si moi je suis convaincu et peut leur montrer comment se débrouiller, et qui n'a besoin que d'une pichenette pour basculer son OS.
Mais là je suis refroidit, j'attendrai la version 9, car je ne crois pas au révolutions dans les versions mineures.
Bonne soirée !
@Xavier: ça m'a fait bizarre de te lire.. j'ai commencé aussi sous Windows 3.1 et j'ai suivi à peu près le même chemin, de découverte du PC sous Windows en total autodidacte..
Et j'ai connu les mêmes galères en passant à GNU/Linux. J'avais demandé à un pote de m'installer Mandriva en dual boot. A l'époque je n'avais même pas Internet.. d'un autre côté ça m'a éviter la tentation d'essayer d'ajouter des logiciels..
J'ai tâtonné sous Mandriva, en essayant de comprendre, en galérant comme ce n'est pas permis, comme tu l'as très bien décrit: la galère du windowsien débarqué sous GNU/Linux. Mais j'ai persévéré: je n'avais pas les moyens de me payer des bêtes de courses, et je trouvais ma bouse de PC bien plus réactive sous Mandriva que sous Windows 2000.
Puis j'ai eu, enfin, une ligne ADSL. J'ai gardé Mandriva pas mal de temps (j'avais eu le temps de m'y habituer), en la réinstallant de temps à autres quand j'avais fait trop de bêtises ^^
On m'a ensuite parlé de Debian, que j'ai testée et adoptée avec joie. J'ai ensuite totalement abandonné Windows (plus de multiboot, juste Debian). Et j'envisage prochainement d'installer FreeBSD :p
Maintenant, c'est sous Windows que je galère. Pas pour m'en servir: clic, j'ai Firefox (ou IE, beurk), tiktiktik je tape un lien, clic je surfe.. en général je me borne à télécharger putty et/ou WinSCP pour accéder à mon serveur mézon, ou à lire mes mails: vu que j'ai un eeePC, je ne dépends pas trop du PC des gens chez qui je vais.
Mais quand il faut dépanner un Windows.. rhaaa! Ctrl+Alt+F1: rien! Ah oui merde.. le terminal, il est où?? Ahhh! Bon, C:/Documents And Settings... Heeeu? wget? y'a pas. telnet? pas d'echo local. on le met comment? man telnet? y'a pas. Je viens de changer la carte mère de mon voisin, Windows bloque en chargeant mup.sys.. je boote sur une Ubuntu en live, j'arrive sur CCM en demandant aux pros du Windows quoi faire: faut réinstaller. pardon? Oui, réinstaller, pas de fichier de conf à modifier, de pilote à ajouter manuellement.. Windows, tu réinstalles, cherche pas à comprendre. Arg..
Je te rejoins totalement dans ton expérience, et mon analyse est la suivante: c'est extrêmement difficile de changer d'habitude, à un point que l'on n'imagine pas. Pas en tant qu'utilisateur: plus la personne à qui je prête mon PC n'y connait rien, moins il a de chance de remarquer que ce n'est pas son Windows habituel :p
Mais pour administrer la bête, c'est une énorme difficulté que de changer totalement de manière de penser, en effet.
@Ploum: De ce que je retiens dans l'accompagnement des nouveaux utilisateurs d'OS libres, le plus difficile c'est de leur permettre de cohabiter avec le pas libre: client MSN pas aussi fonctionnel, formats de fichiers (.doc, .odt), sites Web conçus pour IE Flash et WMP.. Tu ne trouves pas?
Hey, the picture of the woman shows the former German "Bundesministerin für Verbraucherschutz, Ernährung und Landwirtschaft" (Federal secretary for consumer protection, nutrition and farming).