On 1/29/07, jmak <jozmak@...155...> wrote:
This is one way to look at it. I personally prefer taking advise from those who have already proven themselves rather than from amateurs or recreational users. Big difference.
As for me, I personally prefer taking advice from those who have spent some time thinking about their problem. Who have first-hand Inkscape experience and understand the basic principles of our UI. Who know how it's done in other apps but have fresh ideas about how it can be done in Inkscape. Who can reason and use real-world examples. Who understand that there exist wildly different user habits and use cases for wildly different tasks.
Rather than from someone who's spent years working with a single product, grew fond of its quirks and limitations, and wants us to reproduce them exactly and literally.
Big difference :)
But beyond user experience, did you know that companies put lots of money into interface research.
I've heard references to this "research" multiple times, but allow me to have my reservations. I do not know what exactly are they trying to measure, in what way, and what effect it has on their UI - so I cannot assess that. What I see and can assess is the final result, the UI of their products. And needless to say, I can identify many horrendously braindead interface choices in most of these "researched" products.
Interestingly, the level of clunkiness seems to be somehow directly proportional to the market share that the product holds (just compare Adobe Illustrator and Xara, or Windows and OSX).