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<font size="-1">Please delete this last message, it was a duplicate.</font><br>
<br>
On 01/11/2011 09:50 PM, Ian Elwood wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:4D2D4122.8060405@riseup.net" type="cite">
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<font size="-1">Hello developers of the wonderful and amazing open
source software (Free Software if RMS is listening), Scribus!<br>
<br>
I joined this list in hopes that I could share two stories with
the developers of Scribus, if this is the wrong venue please
issue me a swift rebuke or a gentle nudge, depending on your
mood ;) Here goes:<br>
<br>
</font><font size="-1">--------------------------------------------------------------------</font><br>
<font size="-1">Success! Making Scribus Work in the Workplace<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
I am the "web guy" at a bay area nonprofit, and an open source
cheerleader. My boss supports me and likes open source too. I
routinely send emails to our internal list, suggesting helpful
free and open source tools that our campaigners can use in their
work. We have moved everyone to Thunderbird and Firefox.
Recently one of my coworkers came in and said something to the
effect of, "Hi, I just wanted to come in and say thanks. You
recommended Scribus to me and I found it really easy to use.
Look, I made these postcards!" He held up a really crisp, clean
looking postcard that he had made in-house and sent to our
printer. We saved the cost of our (over priced) designer that
we usually contract, so everyone was really happy. Success!<br>
<br>
--------------------------------------------------<br>
Fail! Making Scribus Work in the Home<br>
</font><font size="-1">--------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
My partner (just now) was sitting across the room from me, and
asked if there was, "Anything like InDesign, but Open Source."
She is not an Open Source nut, but listens to my evangelism
every now and then. The next 60 seconds of her interaction with
Open Source software are telling, and the crux of my story. I
told her that I recommended Scribus to coworkers, and they
really liked it. I spelled the name for her after repeating it
a couple times (What?! Scribe-is? Scrib Use? Scribbus?) and
she found the website with no problem, once she had the
spelling. She got to the homepage, clicked Download on the
navigation and was redirected to Sourceforge. For
non-developers who don't know what Sourceforge is, this is
disorienting and raises the "am I donwloading a virus?" alarm.
She had heard of Sourceforge, so continued on to find the list
of folders. She was slightly confused, but figured out that the
one "Scribus" without the "svn" was the right one. </font><font
size="-1">She doesn't know what SVN is, but figured this out
(she is studying for a PhD in something unrelated to computers,
so is smart and very tech-savvy but not
programmer-level-savvy). </font><font size="-1">Then after
clicking on that folder she became very confused. <br>
<br>
At this point (60 seconds later) she almost gave up, but
narrowed down the options and chose one, feeling unsure that it
was right. Then there was ANOTHER LIST of (to her) seemingly
random options to choose from on a list. She used process of
elimination and half guessed again, finding the list item with
the EXE file extension. She found it very counter intuitive
that the correct option was at the bottom of the list -- but
this is kinda besides the point, given that you don't control
Sourceforge's UI.<br>
<br>
The expected behavior that (just one user, but hopefully it
helps) she was looking for was to click on a large icon that
says "Download" in large font, perhaps to have an EXE
automatically download. Also acceptable would be to click on a
download icon and be directed to one to three options on a
subpage, that ask for your operating system.<br>
<br>
I think making a best guess at what the user will want when
visiting the webpage to download is worth it, to increase
adoption of the software. If people are being driven off by
usability before they download the software, you are surely
missing more valuable user feedback that could be given by
someone who has the software installed already.<br>
<br>
I hope you take this as constructive criticism, as I said before
I love Scribus and recommend it regularly to coworkers, so I
want to make sure they have a clear path to getting it up and
running on their computers. Let me know if you have any
questions.<br>
<br>
The above mainly applies to Windows and Mac users, since folks
(like me) on Linux will use Synaptic, apt-get or other
repository-like ways of installing the software.<br>
<br>
Hope this helps!<br>
<br>
--ian--<br>
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