Strigidaemon

[Louai Al-Khanji]

On Tuesday 01 April 2008 23:05:10 Alexander Neundorf wrote:
> On Tuesday 01 April 2008, Randy Kramer wrote:
> > On Tuesday 01 April 2008 03:48 am, Louai Al-Khanji wrote:
> > > Having dialogs pop up at unsuspecting users is not very nice. :)  I
> > > think
> >
> > most
> >
> > > users will not know what they are configuring, and especially not _why_
> > > they are configuring it. IMHO it would be better to have a default
> > > configuration that suits most people, and provide a (convenient) way to
> > > tailor strigi settings for power users.
> >
> > IMHO, having some program start running, using lots of my cpu and memory
> > (I'm thinking back to kat, but is any indexing program much better?), is
> > worse than a one-time (unless you request to be reminded) popup that
> > tells me there is an application named strigi whicht will be started by
> > default (at each boot?)  and will index such and such directories by
> > default unless I change the configuration now (or later, by asking to be
> > reminded).
> >
> > Aside: Have the usability people weighed in on this?  (Or been asked?)
> >
> > This popup occurs either during installation or the first time a user
> > logs in (or something along those lines), not every time the user logs
> > in.
> >
> > Can't "we" make a popup that is relatively self-explanatory and "gentle"?
> >
> > Trying a first draft (for the first time it pops up).
>
> I'm afraid nobody will read that much.
>
> Alex

I agree. It's been documented that users are unlikely to read popups. 
Especially when they contain a lot of text. [1]

I still think sane defaults with the ability to tailor the settings when that 
is required/wanted is the way to go. Here's why I think a popup on login is 
bad:

1. It immediately breaks the whole flow of the desktop. You get one first 
impression. That first impression will stay. I really think it's not cool to 
raise cognitive load like that right from the start.

2. As a developer I would not be sure which to pick - users are going to be 
thoroughly confused and frustrated. Most people will really not know what 
they want, even if they read the whole text and understood it.

3. Signal to noise ratio. From the users point of view it's just noise.

4. Cognitive Dissonance. Most people have been conditioned to either ignore 
popup dialogs ("Just press OK.") or to associate them with something negative 
("Are you sure you want to delete this file forever?" "Your app just crashed. 
Sorry about that.")

That said, storage space *is* a problem. On the other hand, "storage space is 
cheap", as the old adage goes. ;)

[1] For example Joel Spolsky: User Interface Design for Programmers

-- 
Louai Al-khanji