[Kde-games-devel] KScoreDialog usability related question

[Parker Coates]

On 6/12/07, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> voila, a default name. offer a menu item to change the name (or via the high
> score dialog itself? you could ask at the start of the game as Burkhard
> suggests, but that seems like an annoyance for something that the vast
> majority of people would just click through as it would have the right info

I think there's a major problem with these "don't ask for name every
time" solutions. We're forgetting one of KDE Games' biggest user
groups: the shared family computer.

I agree that nerdy types (like ourselves, who most likely have our own
personal computers) are probably going to prefer a "set-it-and-forget"
approach to highscore names. The computer has only one primary user
who competes with his/herself to beat personal bests and doesn't want
to be bothered after ever game.

But, think about Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine both love mah-jong
and love knocking each other off the top of the highscores list. Do
you think they're likely to remember to change the highscore name
before starting  a new game? Having to "log in" before playing is the
exact opposite of quick and fun.

Some might counter that they should each have their own user account
and a global highscores file would take care of this, which is true.
But in my experience, family computers usually don't have separate
users and the last time I checked most distributions don't enable
global highscores due to security concerns.

There is also the issue of guest users. My friend Dave comes over to
visit, sits down at my computer where I'm already logged in, and fires
up KMines. If Dave beats one of my times and KMines automatically
records the highscore under my name, not only is Dave not going to be
pleased, but the highscore list is now innaccurate. This was by far my
biggest complaint about the old KExtHighscore framework.

I guess I'm sounding pretty negative here, but I'm not: there have
been some really promising suggestions in this thread. I just wanted
to remind everyone that there are some pretty common use cases that
REQUIRE the user to be asked for his/her name every time. That's why I
suggest we stick with a system that makes it equally easy use the last
stored name or to enter a new one.

Parker

PS: I think this thread has made it obvious that highscores in KAtomic
are a special case, probably best served by a special highscores
implementation.