KAssistant announcement

[Thomas Zander]

On Monday 14 August 2006 11:57, Olivier Goffart wrote:
> The real question is about English here.
> In the English language, do you better say "Assistant" or "Wizard" ?
>
> I'm not one English speaker, so i don't know the answer at all.
> But if the answer is "Assistant",  then, the class name should be
> changed (to KAssistantDialog IMO)
> Anyway, if "Wizard" is the perfect term to name such assistant, then
> the class name will stay KWizard

As all such things, there are different reasons to name it different 
things. Most conflicting. The Wizard idea has been around from the early 
Macintosh days and all long time users are familiar with the terminology 
in one way or another.
Since some years the term 'assistant' started popping up and while I may 
personally think more about clippy[1] when that name is used, I'm sure 
there are others that feel this is a more proper name.

Assistant is some person helping you out doing mundane tasks, while wizard 
is the very smart person giving you directions and just doing its magic 
behind the scenes.
On a tangent; thats the main reason people despise clippy, because it 
tries to help you but it doesn't actually make the work easier, it just 
tells you what to do. I expect it to take lots of out of my hands if I 
agree to that. Without doing any testing at all, I fear that that leads 
to a (slightly) negative idea whenever an 'assistant' comes up.

Ok, back to the point.
The Wizard idea is based on the concept that you choose what you want and 
then magically it happens. I have not seen wizards like those around for 
ages (I think that KMails spamwizard comes close, though).
The assistant idea is just a boring questionnaire that you fill out and 
you get what you most likely want.

To conclude; Like I mentioned in my earlier email, I have zero problems 
with renaming it assistant. The naming is just a very small part of the 
experience. Most wizards nowadays are actually boring assistants anyway.

What is really important is that the resulting dialog gets a proper 
interaction design, since most programmers are simply incapable of seeing 
the 'magic' of their work since they are too focused on the details.


1) for the ones that didn't figure it our; with clippy I mean the awful 
paperclip in early office versions and even in todays open office (where 
its even worse since I just get a 'help not installed' when I click it ;)
-- 
Thomas Zander
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