[KLUG Advocacy] A User Leaving

[Adam Williams]

>>Being somewhat busy at work, I wanted to get involved with this thread
>>but I chose not to.  I wanted to state some gut feelings.
>Understandle. It's best to sometimes let things lie, other notions
>well up. THere's no rush to answer, or to judge.
>>Gut feeling 1)  CHANGE IS F'n HARD for the average user.  If you move
>>one menu or put some field 1 over, users will....
>{complex wording I didn't understand :) removed}
>>....who have certain
>>tendencies toward the desire for no changes what-so-ever.
>Yeah, yeah. Maybe. OK, I agree. But I'm not even sure that matters. Um..
>I have a couple of responses to this, and I'm curious about something....
>Responses:
>1. There's change, Change, and CHANGE. A lot of it is ** OS INDEPENDENT**,
>   the change Dirk talks about above... it's going to happen no matter
>   what... sooner or later, and it's change to the application, not the
>   Window Manager, not the OS, not the file system, or any other damn 
>   thing. EXPECT that many users are going to hate it, because they have
>   (like it or not, for better or worse) devolped a certain rhythm, an
>   intuitive feel, for the application the way it is... they've memorized,
>   no.. INTERNALIZED the number of tabs needed to get from here to there,
>   and the change that's been introdiced just upset that... so now they 
>   have to UNLEARN their old stuff, and RELEARN the new way to get that
>   rhythm, that sense of being tuned to the app...back, and all the while
>   remain productive. 
>2. There's something more to it than what we've touched upon, some element
>   that makes this change fundamentally different from others.  For example,
>   I can think of a user interface that changes all the time, and is in
>   fact  available on the market in many different forms, all at once. We
>   don't think much of switching from one of these interfaces to another,
>   and a lot of people relish the experience, even though the consequences
>   of making a mistake are a lot more serious than anything that you can
>   do with a workstation.
>   People have insecurities, fears and maybe other things between their
>   ears that stop them from being the least bit flexible with user inter-
>   faces on computers, but on the other user interface I was talking 
>   about above (cars, if you hadn't guessed)? No problem! Crazy!!
>Question:
    Perhaps this (or something similar) is a good way to explain this?
    Maybe this is related to the overall attitude people have toward
    computers?.....
    I'd like to encourage you to write about this.... [???]

I think it lies (in part) in the depth of the change.  One car's UI can
be quite different than another (My little blue pickup vs. Mr.
Morrison's BMW) but conceptually they are all really the same. Steering
wheel, accelerator, etc...  

1. But people don't view cars as technology,  they are something that
have been around since 99.9% of the population can remember, and since
about 1928 (introduction of the Model A Ford) have always had the same
conceptual model for operation.  "Computers" (and in the mind of the
general populace everything from applications to networks to hardware
falls in that one catch all category) are very different.  Most people
alive today can indicate a time of first experience with "computers", 
can they do that with cars?  I know I can't,  they were just always
there.  So computers are still new,  that makes them different
psychologically.

2. Computers are still (IMHO) at the crawl-out-of-the-sea stage of
technological evolution.  They are changing all the time.  From CBM to 
CP/M to korn to the Apple IIe,  to DOS, to MacOS9/Windows/X-Windows, to
Windows 9x/GNOME/KDE/Mac OS X/XP.  Change is still rapid an herky-jerk, 
instead of gradual granular improvement each release remakes the world. 
And all the above iterations I've seen in my lifetime (and I'm at less
than 50% life expectancy).  I don't think alot of people truly dislike
the changes as most are sincerely positive,  but they don't feel "in
control".  Even if they own the computer, the OS changes, etc... are
still perceived as being thrust upon them by `progress`.  And in the
corporate environment how much more so;  those guys in IT changed
everything again.

3. Superstition.  I'm serious.  I have many users who really fear the
technology.  Jokes about "magic smoke" aren't really jokes,  or not
entirely.  A good percentage of the population have no-idea-what-so-ever
how it all "really" works or what it means.  Lack of understanding =
feelings of no control = fear.  When people are afraid,  especially when
that fear is nebulous and they don't necessarily recognize it for what
it is, they resist change, all change, period.  And this has nothing to
do with age.  I've have recent college graduates stick there fingers in
their ears (no I'm not kidding) when you try to explain to them why
something is the way it is.  It is that "computer stuff".  I'm the
wizard who can understand it all, and it is all beyond them, period, 
stop muttering that stuff at me.  The only way the resolve this is to
kick the living snot out of our current raft of educators.

4. On a specifically Linux "vs." Windows note,  Linux does make serious
conceptual changes.  No drive letters, drives are 'mounted' on a
hierarchy,  drivers ship with the OS, not the product, etc...  People
who've never met anything other than DOS are a bit snowed by this.  In
me experience Mac user's tend to say "Oh! Ok.",  because they've never
met drive letters, etc...  And if one thinks about it for a bit the
concept of a hierarchy of file systems really does require a little
better grasp on things like 'partitions' than the drive letter idea.  It
isn't that I run fdisk and suddenly another driver letter appears;  I
run fdisk and then I have to do two other things (format and specify
where to attach).  It is just one example but I think there are several
REAL changes operationally between Linux and Windows (mouse cut-n-paste
would be another one).  These small issues can be big deals for people
who have never met anything different.  Once one has learned English, 
one can study Latin and it pretty much makes sense.  Then look at
French, Spanish, etc... and it is "Aha!  They have lots of the same
rules"  Then study some asian language,  your fundamental underpinnings
change.  I don't think Linux vs. Windows is that extreme, but at first
it can seem that way when a user goes to perform what, to them, is a
simple operation.

>>Gut feeling 2)  I can empathize with this guy very much.  I made 1 point
>>about how in gnome v. kde, kde will give you an hourglass ....
>I feel his pain, and yours. At the same time, I have the feeling that a
>good deal of this is so unneseesary. The arrogance and nastiness you got
>for a response ain't exactly what I can call the best spirit of free
>software, that's for sure.

No it wasn't,  but I wouldn't put it in the "Terribly uncommon" category
either.

>So what can we do about that? I'm not so sure? How many of these stories
>do we have, compared to the number of positive outcomes? I beleives those
>numbers speak for themeselves. Doesn't make each bad one easier to live
>with, but maybe there's consolation in the big picture, and we can all
>do better...

Yes.  But a guy with a beard on TV said it takes 8 compliments to
'erase' one insult.

>>Gut Feeling 3)  Most open source software comes from people tinkering
>>and doing it for the love of it.  'Most' open source programmers want to
>>get what they want done, done.....
>I don't see this and doing the grunt work that you discuss as being 
>mutually exclusive. I can tell you that several things prompt me to go
>from the copying of previous solutions to writing my own, but it often
>ain't glory, I'll tell ya that. Often a lot of little bits and pieces
>of gruntwork make for a glorious result. It's neat when you can recognize
>that; it's sometimes slow in coming. Perhaps this is what is happening
>in a lot of places, to a lot of developers.

It is.  The creation of desktop managers after ages of window managers
it one sign of that.

>>They are not so interested in making understandable graphical configuration
>>tools for complicated services and configurations.  Only programmers that 
>>get salaries for performing such tasks do so (for the most part).  
>With all due respect, NONSENSE!!
>Oh, OK... most of them won't. In fact, over 95% of them won't. 
>Maybe more.
>But it's going to float someone's boat, maybe a few someones. They're
>going to make the next step, the step you think they won't. That, to
>a great degree, is how and why this approach to software development
>continues to succeed.

I saw a figure that only 4% of software development is concerned with
"boxed" shelf sold software.  So alot of programmers are being paid to
work on (internal?) applications.  A great deal of this work does leak
out,  and then there are companies like Ximian.  I think there are more
people being paid to create free software than most people think.

. . . .
>>I truly can empathize with the writers position.
>When I read the article, I did, a lot more than now. IMOL this doesn't
>call for empathy as much as it does understanding, on our part. If we
>need to modify our mindsets (as a community), and gain thereby, then
>we need to take a look at that, and choose accordingly.

I think the biggest change is that the community needs to place a
greater emphasis on make information easier to find.  Ximian + Red
Carpet would have answered several of his points,  but apparently he
never found them,  or saw them and didn't understand what they were. 
One could write "Making a user friendly Linux desktop".  But how do you
get this onto the end-users screen?  They maybe will visit LDP (I think
most don't),  but if they do they will be greeted with a plethora of
uncatagorized and in some cases VERY obsolete documentation..