[openbeos] Re: A very interesting 3D desktop prototype...

It looks very sophisticated at the beginning, but after a 3-second-thought, it 
would be extremately difficult to the desktop user to use all that huge bunch 
of "techniques" in order to just manage files.

In everyday life round here, final users are not as skilled with the mouse as 
you, experienced programmers, graphical masters, Web CEO's, etc. I know many 
secretaries that, because they cannot use adequately a mouse, they ask and 
learn the desktop shortcuts, so they are on their real world typing the way 
they know, and they do it very quickly. I suppouse drag and drop is not 
implemented in Windows systems because of this. No "average user" in my 
everyday life would imagine, i know it, that if they drop a document file into 
the printer icon, it will print it. No one.

Of course it looks fancy, but in my experience, normal 2D files and folders are 
just being learnt by users, and new users prefer to have their files into just 
one location. Some of them don't even trust in the "My Documents" shortcut, and 
save their files into a folder named after them in the root of the disk.

Screams have been heard when this video was shown to just a few ot this "model 
secretaries". One said "how would i find a file withing a pile? If sometimes 
the icons overlap and i separate them" (by hand, let me say it) and another 
said "and how many "mouse turns" should i do to make the files go wherever they 
like?" To them, it looked like an Adobe Photoshop or an Autodesk AutoCAD demo: 
pretty amazing but pretty difficult to manage with that neat and skillfulness. 
Then, the normal comment: "I don't see that we change all the PC's we have to 
implement that. We are safe". And the final question was "Would it be switched 
off, like the XP theme?"

I vote for the Be search way. I write what i look for, and in a flash i get it. 
It would be great in the real world to find stuff this fast, and it is 
fantastic in the media OS.

Miguel Zúñiga González

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