Re: Default Template discussion

Dirk Frederickx wrote:
[...]
> Ref. the bottom-page-actions discussion.
> I've seen several 'votes' in favour of bottom-page-actions. 
> (allthough I hardly use them myself)

Dirk,

One of the things I brought up early in the discussion was that in
normal user surveys it takes something like a test population of
over 400 people to gain enough statistical weight to make reasonable
predictions about people's preferences. When the test group is small,
and especially when the test group is specialized (such as the
recent studies on brain function conducted *only* on university
students, hardly a normal population!), we have to remember that we
are a very small group, and very specialized. What we do is almost
irrelevant to what the typical user does. We're used to keyboard
shortcuts, knowing which features exist and usually where they are,
and what the features (or names of features) do. Most users won't.

Given we don't have a nice large test population the best we can do
is follow user interface guidelines, and try very hard to think like
a user, i.e., forget what we know about the software and pretend we
have never seen a wiki before, or at least pretend that we've never
edited a wiki before. Most people haven't.

I'm probably preaching to the choir here a bit, but I always have to
remind myself that my own habits are likely not that of the typical
user. My own thoughts on the bottom-of-page issue come from that:
if a user reads a page, gets to the bottom, and then can't see any
actions, they'll probably not take any. It often takes a long time
for a novice to understand the basic functions of any software
program, to capture what it does, how it works, where features are
located. Once they get over that hump things usually are fine (well,
except for extremely complicated programs like MS Word).

Murray

...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray07 at altheim.com>                           ===  = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     = =  ===
SGML Grease Monkey, Banjo Player, Wantanabe Zen Monk               = =  = =

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