Re: Plasma Next Naming

On Thursday, January 16, 2014 18:13:23 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> I can't speak for "the team" (whichever team), it's my own opinion and that
> is that being more informal is simply more attractive to broader group of
> people.

a specific “broader group”, or do you mean “more people than Plasma appeals to 
now"?

> Being overly technical just causes fear in many users - I know it
> from around me where I installed some Linux distros - if I tell them
> "you're using Kubuntu 12.04, which is a long-term-support release", they a)
> have no idea what I'm talking about b) are scared of it because they don't
> understand it.

there are more options than “informal” and “technical”; “sophisticated“, 
"professional” and “inspiring” are three other options that occur quickly to 
me. 

i do agree that more technical (”jargon”) isn’t useful. i’m just wondering 
about the decision to go “informal”. whichever the direction is, it will 
influence expectations.

it took KDE *quite* a while to get away from the “cartoony mess” caricature 
that kept getting used as a blanket criticism of everything KDE. this was our 
own “fault”: we had a cartoon of a wizard in one dialog, a cartoon of a dragon 
in several others, a cartoon style bubble on the window decorations and a 
very, very colourful set of icons.

this isn’t to say that this was bad, it just led to people trying to convince 
others to not try KDE because it was “cartoony”.

if the shift is towards “informal”, we probably need to prepare for the “it’s 
not for serious business” response.

> Using animals (and hey, everyone likes nice colorful fishes) creates imho

not in their software ... some love it (Hello, openBSD), but it will not speak 
to people who don’t get why a (changing) fish is part of the brand for a given 
desktop/tablet/etc. interface. as a more informal (and abstract) concept and 
may not play well with more formal contexts (e.g. business, or simply the 
straight-laced)

> better association with the product - "I'm using that system with
> clownfish" rather than "I'm using Kubuntu LTS". So that's why I think being
> a bit more informal is a good idea, because these are the users we want to
> attract, more skilled/knowledgeable users are deciding on other merits
> anyway (on ones they do understand).

interesting; so the expectation is casual users to  refer to the desktop 
environment version in conversation? e.g. along the lines of “kit kat” for 
Android? i’ll have to try to find data for this next statement, but it seems 
that it’s just another set of “more skill/knowledgeable users” who follow 
those code names.

where this really will start to rub is if there is both a date based name and 
a fish based name, as it divides the users into four groups:

* those who know and use both date and fish
* those who know/use the date
* those who know/use the fish
* those who still don’t know either

branding is usually more effective the more consistent / normalized it is.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo

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