Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3288 mails)

[Randall R Schulz <rschulz@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 29 December 2007 09:33, Bryen wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 12:30 -0500, Mike McMullin wrote:
> > ...
> >
> >   I am aware of that Anders, but they are not stupid people, and
> > revenue is revenue, even if it's just a license.
>
> No, but they do rely on the stupidity of their userbase.  Their
> revenue is based on telling their users what it is the users want,
> not the other way around, which is how they got to be successful.

You could not be more wrong.

Apple's ability to attract users and create usable and accessible user 
interfaces—something they do better than anyone else and have been 
doing for over two decades—is _extensive_ user testing. In fact, they 
were pioneers in really listening to (or, more precisely, watching) 
their users. They never let designers give users hints during their 
user testing. They watch and listen (users are instructed to verbalize 
their thought processes as they use the software or hardware being 
tested) but give no feedback. Then they use those results to improve 
and refine their interfaces.

Apple's software is usually less feature-laden and some, especially 
highly technical users, tend to find it overly simplified, but one can 
definitely make the case that this is a better approach than 
Microsoft's "never say no to a feature request" practice.


Randall Schulz

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