[Bitpim-devel] Result Status to users, Part II

[d***@netzero.com]

Based on comments received from Roger, Stephen, and Vic, I added a checkbox to the "Get Phone Data" and "Send Phone Data" dialog to allow users to optionally enable/disable the display of the dialog. Additionally, if the users opted to disable the feature, the result status text is sent to the Log display instead, so that developers still have the info they want. I'm attaching some screen shots as examples. Comments & suggestions are welcome & appreciated.

-Joe Pham

[Roger Binns]

Post by d***@netzero.com
examples. Comments & suggestions are welcome & appreciated.

I am very much against this. The reason is quite simple. Why
would users care? I *HATE* software that requires babysitting
which is exactly what this is.

I understand this is important to you as a developer, but it
really doesn't matter to users. If they don't want their
phone rebooted etc, then they can't use BitPim. Simple, plain,
and no nonsense.

Roger

[d***@netzero.com]

Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure I fully understand what you meant by babysitting. The idea is to inform users of various BITPIM events for their info, as in my example, BITPIM is about to reset their phones, so they should wait a minute or two before attempting anything else. Veteran users can always turn the feature off should they choose to do so. Personally, I found it to be helpful as a user; as a developer, I would constantly look at the log output.

I don't feel as strongly for the idea as you against it. I just thought that it might be beneficial to users.

-Joe Pham

Post by d***@netzero.com
examples. Comments & suggestions are welcome & appreciated.

I am very much against this. The reason is quite simple. Why
would users care? I *HATE* software that requires babysitting
which is exactly what this is.

I understand this is important to you as a developer, but it
really doesn't matter to users. If they don't want their
phone rebooted etc, then they can't use BitPim. Simple, plain,
and no nonsense.

Roger


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[Roger Binns]

Post by d***@netzero.com
Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure I fully understand what you
meant by babysitting. The idea is to inform users of various BITPIM
events for their info, as in my example, BITPIM is about to reset
their phones, so they should wait a minute or two before attempting
anything else.

If the user attempts anything else while the phone is rebooting, then
it will fail. The information being given to them has no value. They
can't do anything about it.

For example if your car told you 4 to 10 minutes after you start
driving that the automatic choke is now fully closed, and told you
that on every journey, what would you think?

Have a read of this article:

http://www.cooper.com/articles/art_goal_directed_design.htm

I am all for UI stuff that is about the user's goals. Rebooting
is about the tasks. Tasks matter to us as developers, but are
of little interest to us as users. (Just as the automatic
choke people did hard work and care about it working).

For every single message, there should be an answer to the
question "So what". The worst that can happen is that they
try stuff before the phone has finished rebooting, and all
that will happen then is that BitPim won't see the phone or
won't be able to talk to it. However the user has the
phone at hand and can see more about what it going on with
it than we can from the software level.

Roger