Diane Mackay wrote: > Folks at Collabnet or Sun or other contributing companies are likely in a > position to watch other users and provide feedback, as they train new > coworkers at their work places to use the web site.
Sun is known to have a strong usabilility team. I'd love for them to chip in. > >For example, they have a tendency to rationalize. A user might say "if the > >link had been bigger I would have seen it". Well... we don't know that. > >What we know is that the user didn't see the link. > > Some users are analytical, and can accurately rationalize their behaviour. I > think it is a mistake to make this a black and white item. It's meant as a guideline, not an absolute statement. Of course there are exceptions. Second, you are an exceptionally analytical person Diane. Most of us can't match you there. Finally, it's kinda hard to know which users are analytical over email. :-) But yes, you're right, there's a gray area. It's a guideline, not a black and white rule. Usability is not exactly an exact science. :) > >I think his suggestions about multimedia and human faces is a very bad > >idea. > > Yet, this very technique is used on the website that is linked to this page > that you have shared with us! Check out the People link: > > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/tips/usertest/ I'm confused. I don't see pictures of people or multimedia on that page. Regardless, I didn't mean to say that multimedia and pictures of people are *always* bad for *all* pages. I meant to say that I think it's bad for *our* page right now. For the reasons I gave. > Both pages are somewhat like tools to one that hangs out in the > community to do work, But the people who hang out at the community are not the primary users of the front page. Things that are for the community should be elsewhere. Perhaps http://www.openoffice.org/resources or something like that. You and I are not the target audience for this particular page. > Perhaps different chunks of the site should be set up for different > audiences. +1 Yes. For example, I woudln't suggest making the developers page target new users. Or the marketing page target development. > The website is a tool. Who will the tool serve? Likely each page will serve > a different audience. As I write this I realize that it's very hard to > appease all audiences. I agree with you here. I don't know if I'll generally agree with your answers, but I agree with your questions, which is more important. That is, see the page as a tool, and ask who the tool is meant to serve. Ask who your audience is, and what they are looking for. That's the right frame of mind. Best, -- Daniel Carrera | There is no urge so great as for one man to Join OOoAuthors today! | edit another man's work. http://www.oooauthors.org | -- Mark Twain --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
