I read almost every word of a GNOME Usability Study Report today and I have one thing to say: fuck all that shit.
I agree wholeheartedly that GNOME is not ready for my grandmother, my mother, my unborn child, or my dog to use without any training: but should it be? My grandmother can barely use a calculator, my mother just stares at my screen in amazement when I visit her with my laptop, my unborn child can't even work it's lungs let alone a computer, and my dog is perfectly content with his bone.
There are very few things in life that are immediately usable without any training whatsoever. I am fairly certain that if I took an individual that had used nothing but a bonfire to cook with in the past and installed an oven in his cave he would have no clue what to do with it. Even if I hinted to him and said, "You can cook stuff on it," I believe it is safe to say he would eventually become discouraged and go back to his bonfire.
Even when one individual is used to one version of something, using another version doesn't come easily without training or practice. Take an individual who has NEVER seen a vehicle with a manual transmission before, and set them in one and see how far they get. It is not until you inform them what the extra pedals and levers are for do they even start to understand. Even something as simple as my 4WD shift lever confuses passengers in my vehicle and often prompts comments like, "What does that do?" and, "Why do you have two shifters?".
In the GNOME usability study, when attempting to edit a file, many users complained that they didn't know which program to click on to do such a task. If gedit had been mis-labeled with the phrase "Microsoft Word" I am certain more of the testers would have understood where to go to accomplish such a task. Does this mean that this is the right thing to do? No.
In this study, another common complaint was that the users did not know what a "login" was. However, they did know the terms "browser", "editor", "desktop", "start menu", and "username". They knew those terms because they learned them from prior experience with computers. However, prior to that experience, I am sure they would have had no clue.
The issue here is not that GNOME currently fails as a desktop environment because it lacks much needed usability features. It currently fails because not enough users have been trained on it. If I were to place my mother in front of two computers, one with Windows, and one with GNOME, she would be equally confused without guidance from me. In fact, I have, in the past, attempted to teach my mother how to use Windows on my laptop. I showed her how to connect to the Internet, how to open a Web Browser, and how to log into Yahoo Mail to send and receive email. With me right behind her, she did okay. Then I went home. The next time she was visiting with friends that owned a computer, she asked if she could send me an email. She was not successful. Is this because Windows is not intuitive enough? No. It is because my mother doesn't know how to work a computer.
Making an application, operating system, or desktop environment intuitive is a good thing. Producing training materials for such items is also a good thing. Making demonstration programs that walk the user through these applications while training them to use it is also a good thing. Getting rid of power features, stability, and an uncluttered interface in order to provide an application that teaches users how to use it while they are using it are BAD things. In addition, renaming items. options, and using terminology familiar to Windows users is a BAD thing.
GNOME IS *NOT* WINDOWS.
