Setting sane defaults

[David Edmundson]

>
> First of all I think it's great you cared about this. It's also great
> you guys had a chat with Bjorn at FOSDEM, and we should not drop this.
> Defaults are one of the areas where usability matters the most - what
> about taking this opportunity to review that, and ask Bjorn what he
> thinks about some stuff we're not 100% convinced on (or maybe even
> stuff we're convinced about)?
>
That was a good meeting. He's offered to come to our next sprint.

As a self-declared usabilty genius the key part of usability is simply
to monitor feedback. If 99% of us change a setting, that should be the
default. If no-one uses it, why does the option exist? There's nothing
to discuss, it's a change based on facts.
The best people to listen to are the people who actually use our
software, which clearly includes us. If someone has an opinion without
experiencing the software (or at least 'interacting' with a
screenshot) then their opinion isn't very useful IMHO.

As for usability threads I think it's best if you don't use leading
questions "I think it should be X do you agree?", but simply a "what
do you expect to happen when you click the presence applet?" or even
"what have you got this setting set to"? Otherwise you bias the poll.

I test out quite a bit of stuff on my housemates, that seems to work well :)

Dave