D13593: [Fonts KCM] Improve user-friendliness of some anti-aliasing strings

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

colomar added a comment.


  So, first (and perhaps for me only one this time) guerilla test:
  Participant:
  
  - Plasma user for several years (because I recommended it to her)
  - Frequent but generally mostly "non-technical" computer user
  - Uses Plasma in English but isn't a native English speaker
  - Has quite some experience with GIMP (also in English) and Snapseed, but not with a professional background or education
  
  Procedure:
  
  1. Showed her the "After" screenshot, told her it's from the Fonts area in System Settings, and asked her "What do you think this setting does? ", pointing at the Font smoothing setting
  2. Showed her the "Before" screenshot with the same question
  3. Asked her which one she would understand better
  
  Results:
  
  - "Font smoothing" reminded her of blurring filters in photo editors, but she could not imagine why she'd want to do that with fonts.
  - "Anti-aliasing" didn't ring a bell for her at all. After I showed her the Wikipedia article about it, she understood the concept, but she has never noticed aliasing in screen fonts nor has she ever noticed problems caused by anti-aliasing in fonts, so she can't see a reason why she would ever want to change that setting
  - After reading the article on anti-aliasing, she still compared it to the blurring filters in photo editors, and therefore thought that she would have understood the same from reading "Font smoothing"
  
  Interpretation:
  For this non-technical user, "Font smoothing" is more understandable than anti-aliasing, but does not at all help her understand the purpose of the setting or why she would change it
  
  This - combined with the fact that I was unable to explain the concept of anti-aliasing to her without consulting WIkipedia - reinforces the perception that this is a f**king advanced setting (and it's still the least advanced of that group of settings down there!) which no "regular" user will understand without reading up on the topic, and for 99% of users just leaving the default untouched will be best anyway. Therefore, I really believe we have to introduce some separation for "advanced settings" (which @abetts had in several iterations of his System Settings mockups anyway) which users will only even open when they need to change them and know what they are. 
  For those, we might as well leave it as "anti-aliasing", because users who don't understand what it is see no reason to change it no matter what it's called.
  
  Since we shouldn't make decisions based on a sample of one, however, I'd encourage others to do the same to gather at least maybe a handful of participants.

REPOSITORY
  R119 Plasma Desktop

REVISION DETAIL
  https://phabricator.kde.org/D13593

To: ngraham, #plasma, #vdg
Cc: colomar, mart, davidedmundson, Fuchs, abetts, nicolasfella, plasma-devel, ragreen, Pitel, ZrenBot, lesliezhai, ali-mohamed, jensreuterberg, sebas, apol
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