::scr Editors. Again.

[celia romaniuk]

On Thu, 1 Nov 2001, matt jones wrote:

> Tangent: Could it be that what a GUI user is looking for from a text
> editor may be different to what someone who primarily uses the command
> line will be looking for? Is that because of the difference in interface
> paragdims, or is it a cultural thing? Are those two factors even seperate
> from each other?

I have a feeling that  people tend to  prefer using tools that require the
least possible disruption of their general usage patterns, simply because
they can then spend less time thinking about how they're going to do
something, and more time just doing it. So if people are using
command-line environments all the time, then apps which let them stick to
that environment will be more appealing.

The other thing that comes into play in this whole discussion is, as you
mentioned, the issue of familiarity, as you point out. People like what
they know. 

"I may not know much about science, but I know what I like"
- Martin Amis, in 'Dead Babies'

Tangentially: asking people about what they want isn't really a good user
research technique, for a whole bunch of reasons (she said lazily). A
better technique is to watch how people work and ask them questions about
what they're doing as they do. There's a really good book on this, called
'Contextual Design'.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558604111/

There's a good outline here: http://www.incent.com/cd/cdp.html

> [1] That reminds me of something I read a bit back about how when people
> say "intuitive", they actually mean "familiar". Hence the difficulty
> encountered by dev teams when asked by the PHB to produce something that
> is "completyely original and intuitive to use".

Yeah, it's proabably best expressed in a Jef Raskin (deja one of my posts
to london.pm, I think) - http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html

Celia