Le 2010-10-31 10:51, Dale Huckeby a écrit :
While we agree that "Young Family" doesn't work, it seems to me some of the other categories are similarly broad. A useful rule of thumb would be to focus not on types of persons or groups but on activities. Since "young family" is not an activity, whereas "web development" is, that gives us an objective reason for preferring the latter over the former as a useful category. Likewise for "academia". Not all academics have the same needs, for instance adminstrators versus research professors versus adjuncts who teach and don't do research, yet all would fall under the term "academic". In addition, a given college professor is not going to use his or her computer only AS a professor, and his or her other activities, playing poker online, playing games offline, buying and selling stocks and bonds, etc. would vary widely from person to person. That's why I would focus more narrowly on what a person wants to DO with his computer, in terms of *specific* tasks or activities. Early in the process I would ask him what sorts of things he wants to use his computer for and then list all the things he CAN do with it, each of which can be selected or ignored. It MIGHT be useful to note, without it necessarily being a selectable category, some of the things (and the apps that would go with them) a typical high school teacher or rabid sports fan or writer or stock market player might want to do or, alternatively, we could indicate, along with the description of the uses of a particular app or closely linked set of apps, what kinds of people might find such app(s) useful, and why. All of this is a way of saying, which I think we're in general agreement on, that we should be careful not to cast too broad a net with our categories, that each should embody a *particular* activity or *closely* linked set of activities. Dale Huckeby
Here we agree again. There would be nothing to stop that section, for example, "Academia" to open up to subsets of "Academia-Reasearch"; "Academia-Administrator (office)"; "Academia-Teaching" etc.
And yes, if they play poker online, they would then have checked the "Gaming" category.
The choosing of these categories are what the person wants to DO with her/his computer. What you are suggesting is to ask her/him what they would want to do and they would answer by categories. So why add such a layer when we could already dispense with this layer and go straight to the categories?
There are only a certain amount of programmes available and therefore the same for categories. We can offer the categories. If some of the categories are broad, then, when picked, we could have for example, a drop down extended menu from that categories with a sub-set of more descriptive categories. And, remember, that software packages will bridge the categories where they fit in more than one.
We are saying the same thing but with different approaches. Marc
