> An easy measure of usabilty :- If you gave a squeezebox to your > granny for Christmas would she use it to play music or as a door > stop ? A tired analogy - Granny's are not the universal measure of usability. My Granny could give me a set of kintting needles for Christmas and I wouldn't have the first clue what to do with them, although of course she finds them trivially easy to use. I'd search in vain for the documentation telling me how to operate these needles, and then maybe go to some kintting forum complaining that this stuff should be easier for the non-Granny to pick up and use.
When writing documentation and designing interfaces there is always a level of assumed knowledge and experience - there has to be. Cars do not come with books telling you how to drive - it's assumed you already know. Likewise, when designing the interface for the car, the manufacturer is careful not to stray to far from the conventional. Computers do not come with operating instructions either, you typically get a piece of paper showing you how to connect the wires, and then some quick start guide to Windows XP. Really pretty useless for most people who are either completely new to the whole thing (what's a mouse?) or already know the basics and need to be told the more complex stuff. Now I'm not saying the SlimServer UI/docs are perfect - far from it - but assuming a basic level of domain knowledge (what's an mp3, what's a tag) is perfectly fair - the trick is to get it right. Set the bar too high and you're flamed for being exclusive, or geek oriented, set it too low and you waste time writing docs which no one will read. > When I "browse music" why does "browse music folder" play songs > in a different order to "browse album" ? Because one reads the tags and one doesn't. Personally, from a UI perspective, I think BMF is a mistake. I know lots of people love it, which is why it's there, but if the DB based browses could be customized to allow people to order things how they like then hopefully the need for BMF would vanish, and with it a lot of headaches. > Where do I find a definitive tagging guide for each music format ? > Agreed - a list of tags read and their interpretation would be extremely useful. -- radish ------------------------------------------------------------------------ radish's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=77 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=18651 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
