Longhorn and usability
Finally, someone has pointed out something that has been vaguely bothering me for a while. See, there’s all this Longhorn hype out right now, and the technology is really exciting (or scaring) a lot of developers I know. But, when I try to explain things to end users (say Janette), they all just say “Huh? How is that different from what we have now? How will that make it easier for me to use my computer?”
This has been somewhat of an epiphany for me. I care about the technology, and how cool it is; the overwhelming number of computer users not only don’t care, they don’t even know. All they care is what they see and use, not how it’s done.
They don’t care that Project Utopia will revolutionize how hardware is configured and used in Gnome by making all notifications asyncronous and responsive. They don’t care if it polls or not. All they care about is that it works. When you plug a camera into Windows, your camera software pops up. When you plug your camera into Gnome, nothing happens. That’s the bottom line. And, they won’t care that, post Utopia, Gnome will have a better camera handling setup than Windows, all they care is that it will work.
Ultimately, end users care about usability, not technology. Hense the name: End Users.
Hey! Why do I get singled out? Also it’s kind of hard to care that “all notifications [will be] asyncronous and responsive” or “if it polls or not” when I have no idea what those things mean. Maybe if people would bother with explaining things to end users instead of just assuming they’re all morons, then they would care more about it. Of course, some end users are morons (Help, I can’t find the “any” key!”)