Re: A thought on Windows Experience

[Anthonys Lists]

On 09/12/2013 06:12, James Harkins wrote:

My flippant response makes it sound like any reasonably intelligent person would find the right information fairly quickly, casting the problem in terms of user carelessness. That was a misstatement. My point is that reasonably intelligent, reasonably careful readers can visit lilypond.org and get from it no strong feeling for the importance of downloading a dedicated editor *in addition to* LilyPond itself.

Don't forget, also, that PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT. Off-topic slightly, but read Feynmann on keeping time in your head. The task was "count from 1 to 60 in your head and keep consistent time". MOST people can do that while watching TV, come in bang on time, and answer questions on what they have seen. MOST people, if you hold a conversation with them, either they ignore you or their time-keeping goes to pot. Feynmann was surprised that some of his fellow students could hold a conversation no problem - but watching TV trashed their time-keeping!

Turns out MOST people count in their head using "silent talking". Make them talk, and they can't keep time. But SOME people watch a ticker-tape, and have no trouble talking. Disrupt their visual sense, however, and they're in trouble...

I answer a lot of questions on the SuperCollider mailing list -- a LOT of questions. Often the answers involve "See ***** in the documentation." At some points, I would get frustrated with this... "Why can't people find this information? Aren't they reading the help pages?" Then I realized, it's not that it all -- it's just that there are so many help pages that nobody can get intimately familiar with them quickly. I have something like a 10 year head start over new SC users in that regard. That's a valuable resource on my part, but not a failing on their part.

Are the manual pages in a suitable format? I HATE Word, because its mental map is not mine. On the other hand, I switched to WordPerfect no trouble - it has a different mental map that meshes with mine almost perfectly. The more WP tries to ape Word, the harder it becomes for me to use it.

Likewise, I have no trouble using lilypond's *P*D*F* manuals. My mind is very text-oriented. But I HATE HYPERTEXT. My IQ is off the scale (not really, but I'm in the top few percent of the population), but give me a web-site and if what I'm looking for is not staring me in the face, then I have difficulty finding it.

So you can NOT conclude that a "reasonably intelligent" visitor will be  able to find what they're looking for. I'm "extremely intelligent" and I have difficulty. And I doubt I'm alone ...

Cheers,
Wol