maemo.org - Talk - Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

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- - Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer" (https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=25257)

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

Quote:

Originally Posted by fragos (Post 246441)

One of the worst examples of imposing a UI is the Apple's one button mouse.

Have you ever used the Apple Mighty Mouse? Imho, it's one of the best innovations in mouse technology in a very long time.

Tim

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

and that showed up after how many years?

as for innovation, i dont know. you have to make sure your left finger do not contact the mouse surface if you want to right click, iirc...

about the only really interesting is the use of a scroll ball...

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

Quote:

Originally Posted by XTC (Post 246487)

Please don't do this as fullscreen app only.
That's why I don't even install canola - pretty but i prefer to use multiple apps at time just for flexibility in exchanging data between them.

Of course .... !!!!

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

Quote:

Originally Posted by Khertan (Post 246260)

[...]
To be honest with you, you aren't the first giving gui look and feel, idea and many things for making the best PIM app for Maemo. But we lack three things :

- People with good designing skill to make the ui
- Dev to make things working
- Designer and Dev in the same team ... communicating and doing work that can be used by the others :)

When i read this :
'
What they share here is not merely mock-ups. Its the whole interface. This means a programmer doesn't need to bother (much) about designing the interface anymore since she has the 'blueprints' already. In fact, if one of the current 'PIM' developers would look at this topic they might learn a lot, and possibly make their application better, or more Maemo ready.'
I m really borred, are it s seems you consider that dev don't do their best and doens't hear user and do only what they think is good.

A swf isn't an interface, it s just a mockup ... designing the thing in GTK or EFL isn't so easy ! (and doing somethings in efl (like canola) seems to mean no virtual keyboard)

[...]

Khertan, I haven't tried all PIM solutions, and I am not someone who used a Palm either. I haven't tried mCalendar, but I don't want to sync my data to Google in the USA. I want to sync my data with the server I specify. I don't host anything at Google, the only thing I use is maps.google.com. Why would I want to use more of their applications? I don't believe Google provides them for free for nothing.

As you put clearly designing is also programming; there are some overlappings between design and programming.

Just remember there are often hacks on hacks, mere itches which someone had, without having thought through well. Without looking at past, without collaboration, without thinking of visual people who don't know the program well, and so on. OTOH, there is also research from which nothing stems of...

We also don't know exactly what frameworks will be in Fremantle, so kinda have to wait for SDK. But as far as I am concerned there are many people who would like a good, touch-friendly PIM for Maemo, but not much happens, so something is going wrong in the process.

Fame would be there. Maybe more incentive is required, like money.

In regards to new look 'n feel. Touch (finger( is still in 'research' and 'play' area. Every touch application has this because in some ways they have to optimize to the touch screen interface instead of keeping old paradigms alive. However, if you look deeper, you do notice some things come back and are similar. Now, the goal would have to be to make standards there. This will eventually standardize as well, even if has to go via Freedesktop.org.

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

I'm sorry but I don't have time to fill in all of the paperwork, some points though:

I think that it is great that you are trying to get some feed back so early on and I think that the flash demo is a good way to go. I really got the feel for what the project could become.

I'm not sure about the need for the programs name to take up valuable space on the left hand of the screen, you know what the program is called because you opened it.

Google sync is a good idea, not everyone is savvy enough to setup their own calendar server and this brings functionality to the masses. iCal support would be good too for the same reason.

In the monthly calendar view you should have name indicators for events that can span across more than one day and be recognisable at once. EG on my calendar I mark off holiday time so that I don't book any work. These should be in different colours to indicate different things, Blue = Work, Red = Personal etc.

I think that maybe you could expand the Todo to incorporate some of the "Get Things Done" philosophy? The ability to prioritise and categorise events is really useful. I have Work, Home, Internet, and Shopping, as categories and then Priorities of high, med, low. When you are at home the home events pop up in the order that they need to be done. Maybe the device could look at the wifi network and auto assign the categories to be viewed. You should also be able to mark things as half done or started.

All in all I like the interface and can't wait to see the beta.

Thanks

Steve

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

For sure Google syncing is nice. I'm not arguing this shouldn't be included. Personally, I would not use it, and I believe it is unfortunate all kind of PIM applications allow to sync with different servers and using different protocols. This should be abstracted by libraries so the programmer can easily pick the server and protocol. So please, keep it as option and allow SyncML and iCal as well.

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

Quote:

This should be abstracted by libraries so the programmer can easily pick the server and protocol. So please, keep it as option and allow SyncML and iCal as well.

This is the problem ... library.

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

libical is in fremantle, syncml is in extras-devel iirc or its ported at least

Re: Usability Testing for "Maemo Organizer"

Khertan, have you made anymore progress on your mcontacts app? Given the awesomeness of the other "m" apps, i would love to see it.