A lesson in usability
I've just been helping a friend of ours to get up to speed with her new Macbook Pro (latest model, very nice!). She's a theoretical physicist and a composer and needed a word processing application. Besides, there were were a couple of things about her new mac she was unsure of. Sitting next to her was as educational for as I hope it was for her. Lessons learnt:
- She couldn't find her internet -- there was no icon with a big "e", and she never associated a compass with internet, let alone the name safari.
- Putting a sidebar in finder and putting an entry named "Programs" in that sidebar doesn't make people realize that their applications are to be found when you click on that.
- Dragging icons onto the dock is not discoverable. Dragging icons from the dock is frightening: how can I get that application back? Tell me, please, please that it isn't really gone?
- Somehow, she assumed she had to close all windows before being allowed to start a new application
- It's impossible to explain that there are three ways to install software: opening a dmg and dragging the application to where you want it is hard to grasp, but doable. Opening a dmg and running an installer is impossible to explain. The update center is enough to weird people out.
- MS Office for OS X is rude and nags people to pay for it even when what you really want to do is shut your mac down.
- (Mac salespeople tell customers that it's better to shutdown a macbook pro than to close the lid and let it sleep.)
- Photorealistic icons do put people at ease. As she said "Things like a real trashcan image, it gives me the feeling that my mac is more analog-like, makes it feel like part of the family."
- The spinning circles that indicate progress are very reassuring. Things changing color are not.
- The whole concept of "home directory" or even "documents folder" are weird and inexplicable.
- Being able to just drag all applications that are of interest in one folder without anything breaking is a huge plus.
Oh, and her airport didn't work. She's spent a week trying to get it work with her home wireless lan, with a lot of help from Apple, but didn't succeed. But it also didn't work on my wireless lan, so now we suspect a hardware fault.