Grokdoc:Suggestions
From Grokdoc
2007-03-07 Date all posts! Every article should have the date it was written inserted automatically by default. In the LINUX / FOSS world things change constantly. The fact that individual 'X' had problems (or success!) installing "Debian" in 2004 is likely totally irrelevant in 2007. I cant tell you the number of posts, forum articles, etc. I have had to discard (only after wasting time on them) because they are totally out of date. pgmer6809 -at- yahoo dot com
2007-03-07 How to Enter an Article. I dont see how to enter content. I go to the Editable Main Page, and there is reference there to 'using the wiki markup' to create a link to a new page, but there is no 'edit' button, and I cannot just start typing over the top of the current content. So how do I go about entering My Rant or whatever? Very frustrating. I spend 30 mins here trying to figure out how to do the most basic thing. And I fail miserably.
pgmer6809 -at- yahoo dot com
2007-03-13 Grokdoc is useful for refining rather than fixing
Nice aims GrokDoc has. I immediately thought of a helpful positive contribution but like pgmer6809 it took 10 minutes of faffing to find out how to offer this. Makes me wonder whether the GrokDoc founders are the right people to persue those usability aims.
I suggest that in each task GrokDoc is considering, first ask yourself how much of a visible application model the users have. In other words, the users need to understand the elements and structure of the system, and decide how to manipulate those to achieve their task goals. Menus and buttons offer the users access to invoke system behaviours, but on their own they typically don't describe system structure, so the user is not equipped to decide how to use them.
For example Word Processors support the concepts Current Document, All Documents, Selected Region, Paste Buffer etc. Font choices (e.g. Format:Courier) usually work on the Selected Region but the interface doesn't show this, so they appear broken to users who expect them to work on the Current Document.
If you can see from the interface that this is the case fix it first: you'll save yourself a lot of time trying to analyse confused users.
AnthonyRCroft A googlemail D com
