On Wed, 11 Oct 2006, Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 14:06:24 -0700 From: Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> To: Alan Horkan <horkana@...44...> Cc: Inkscape Development Mailing List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] NEW: more stuff in Help menu
Alan Horkan wrote:
Who are the target users of Inkscape? Nailing that down would avoid confusion and help people focus on serving those users and make decision making easier when tradeoffs must be made.
I think that the target can be summed up quite easily... anyone and everyone.
Yes sure, but that is quite different from what I'm talking about. There are subgroups within "everyone".
As you yourself listed there are people who can be grouped by the tasks they are trying to achieve. For example it might eventually make sense to gather a set of extension and a custom version of inkscape for technical drawing and crimes scenes (kind of like visio) which would highlight some functionality and demphasise others. It might make sense to have a version tailored to comic books, or other versions tailored to different tasks etc. It is a fairly standard idea in usability and design to try and pin down who your users are as it helps you prioritise what to work on first even if you would like to work on everything straight away.
Knowing the audience and knowing the tasks people are trying to achieve helps give developers targets and also makes it easier for users to choose the right tools for them and the task they are trying to achieve.