I was talking with Brian about which information we'd like to collect
from the usability tests, and anticipating the various personas that
might come to take the test (and, eventually, possibly use the
installer).
One such persona involves a low-to-medium experience user who is
typically a Windows user. This person may or may not have installed
Windows or Linux in the past, but is most likely to depend on the
system guessing sane defaults, and may hit a usability snag if they
don't. This is fine, if the system does indeed guess correctly, the
only involvement required (and likely the most complicated
interaction they'll faced) from them during the install would
probably be from the partitioner (which I know we're working to
improve). The Windows installer in particular glosses over the
partioning, as its default involves using your whole hard drive as a
single partition.
I was trying to figure out how to synergize the sort of supportive,
generally-non-technical install that this person would need with the
sort of hands-on, tiny-detail install that a more advanced user might
need or want.
One idea for a compromise I came up with would be a screen at the
beginning of the install, with a series of checkboxes to choose those
components that you wanted to use during the install. These
components can range from "Tweak Hardware", or "Install Additional
Packages" to "Set Theme" -- and, short of a disaster, only those
options which are selected will be presented to the user. For a
custom install option, we could even have some of the more likely
ones pre-selected."
I include "Set Theme", because, particularly for the nontechnical
user, customization (which, in my opinion, also includes the smooth
installation of additional software via a nice package management
system, but this is a different issue) is a big part of what makes
them feel like they "own" their system. The sooner a user feels "at
home" after an installation, the better.
Ideas?
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