:: Re: [DNG] Fwd: Re: What should an …
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Autore: Rick Moen
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To: dng
Oggetto: Re: [DNG] Fwd: Re: What should an Install Guide accomplish?
Quoting chillfan--- via Dng (dng@???):

> I can only agree with that.
>
> My reservations about doing this are mostly been because of our target
> audience, and not wanting to exclude the more savvy users.
>
> But there's nothing wrong with doing this in a side project that
> wouldn't go on the main website.


One realises over time that people differ widely in their ways of
assessing information. So, ideally, one does iterative usability
checking with real (outsider) users, to spot the problems. It's
unfortunately rare to have the time and personnel to do so, though.

Example from outside of the Devuan context: For many year, I've
maintained Web pages for multiple Linux user groups in my area, and
among those were the 'directions' pages explaining how to get to
meetings via car and various forms of public transit. When I inherited
maintenance of Silicon Valley Linux User Group's pages, for example, its
directions page was a horribly overlong, ridiculously overcomplicated
mess that spent, among other things, two whole paragraphs explaining how
to safely cross the light rail tracks. I pruned mercilessly to make the
page short and snappy -- but then also pondered _different ways_ to
navigate.

After a lot of checking, I conceptually divided users of such directions
pages into two groups: map people and directions people. Map people
(like me) needed a good map plus the street address and cross-street, so
I made sure they had those. For the directions people, I made sure
there were succinct process descriptions from probably starting points,
street by street with turns and distances or block counts, and sometimes
'If you see [X], you've gone too far.' Both groups seemed well enough
served after that.

But then the world changed after some years, and I realised there was a
third, growing group: smartphone addicts -- ones who react irritably if
you try to tell them anything beyond street address, i.e., they seem
like directions people until they tell you they have absolutely no
interest in cross-streets. Of course, they were already provided for
by the street address, but could be best served by making the address
prominent, e.g., with <strong> tags.

I hope that's a reasonable example of the 'people assess information in
diverse ways' challenge.