The flame goes everywhere: Canola Haters unite :)
Apart from the title, that is just to grab your attention I really wanted to make sure some people understand one thing: Knowing how to criticize is a crucial thing to have your message heard. Also I wanted Maemo Developers and some heavy users to know another thing: The most important thing your software or your device must have is a target group, the group to which you design and develop your user interfaces.
So, the guys over tabletschool, were very kind with our project, but What I want to talk is on the end :
There’s been a lot of rather strong feedback (EXTREMELY strong, some of it!) for this article already, which is the main reason the ITS has avoided editorials. :-)
This would make me sad, if I was not surrounded by great Developers (physically or in the net - IRC, Gtalk) that are concerned with more than their own belly button. Let me clarify some thing that may help you understand better what is “User Centered Design”:
We picked a user profile. We analyze their needs, We see the competitors, We try to solve the USERs problem and most important: we try to solve that “User” profile problems, not EVERYONE’s problem. Why? Because it’s simply impossible to do so.
With that said, I then ask all the thumbs down guy here on maemo planet to read the following sentence:
“If you don’t agree with the basic concept behind canola, the simplicity and focus on consuming not editing, then Canola is not for you.”
But hei! What is the beauty of open platforms? : You have choice. You have the Hildon UI, you have KDE so you’re actually more well served than those users that do not care for the 95% of features you miss in Canola or any other simplified UI. They care about User oriented interfaces, not a powerhouse interface, and I can be wrong with that but the massive amount of emails I receive gives me the hint that there are a lot of user who wants the simplicity way.
Don’t get me wrong, this is like Itschools not about technical matters. I’m the one here in the company who says: I don’t care what Acronym you’re going to use, I just want the best user experience with everything that we can do on it. I want the cherry on top of the user’s pie. If you don’t think it’s important, pass it forward there are a lot of people that do care about.
And just to make clear: ~80% of the email asked for features, complained about bugs, requested improvements but none asked to include regular UI elements on the software. Why? They understood the goal.
So please, stop felling “hurt” when people talks good things about things you don’t agree. I think Hildon is a desktop like UI, and thus provide a desktop like experience. Canola tried to fill the other gap. If users think they should have more Canola, it’s their rights, as much as you think Hildon should “be ok for them”. It’s not. That’s why the use Canola (or the other apps) and that’s why We focus on python development. Because we believe we need to do more, in a simple and python give us that power.
And about the whole Canola thing: If you also really want to criticize, I know it takes time, but read the forums in ITT. Look at our way of dealing with users. We do treat them as co-developers. We do listen, we do change. But we stick to our goal.
Also to make clear another thing, this time for the tabletschool: http://tableteer.nokia.com/tableteer/os2008/team_marcelo.xhtml, INdT stands for : Nokia Technology Institute and Canola only exists because Nokia indeed wanted it to exist. As I said Canola is in opposite direction to Hildon, but that doesn’t mean Hildon is not good. It just means that the user focus is different.
Concluding: Please understand the concept of user centered design, before trying to compare things. And please be ok with the fact that it was not made for you. As it probably was not made for the one who made it. Or do you really thing all the Devs in the team were happy to hear me shout that the thing was not “smooth” and fluffly enough?
There’s a LOT MORE after the click :) But please, bare in mind that the topic here is not about Canola, or hildon or this or even your taste. It’s about being humble enough to figure out that sometimes you may not be the target.
And answering to the probably technical comments :
a) Indeed Canola has a multimedia face, but it was designed to hold any kind of mobile application, WITH FOCUS on the task. So no, we would never be able to support as many features as a Hildon ui. But our question is : Does our user group, need this function? We keep only the minimal.
b) Automatic media folder refresh: Ha! this is a funny one. Remember canola1? It indeed had it. Why we removed? Because a lot of people complained, that we were sucking resources etc. etc. So we decided, for the whole beta to remove it, and focus on other things until we have the installation wizard. This avoided sucking cpu when not needed, and bug reporting when that was not our focus. Again can you see the partern? we focus on what matters. It does matter for our users, but matter less then the other things on our list. It’s coming? Come on it’s just an “if” (this is a internal joke from Dev guys to myself, but you got the point)
c) While I do believe some more power users need more features, and thus are not satisfied with Canola, I can also make sure there are a lot of developers / power users / Tech enthusiasts that do uset it, and to contribute to the evolution, even being not fully open source.
— Updates answers to the comments —
@ossi1967 :
That’s what I felt was wrong. Hildon seems more “general purpose” whereas Canola is specialized for a certain, probably small group of users (doing simple tasks).
Hi Oskar, Sorry to disagree from you, but I think you didn’t noticed one thing: Even know being “hacker” or power user oriented, the goal for any nokia device is to have reach. To sell. It needs to sell right? And thus I totally disagree with your point of “small group of users” because to be honest, if something simpler was used and was fully integrated (let’s say dual boot) this “small group of users” would be at least 10x bigger then the current hildon fan group. Why? Because a non Desktop like UI is what the regular end user wants, not a small cluttered version of their desktop. Mobile is another scenario, you do different things.
You know what’s the best thing? Is that the first rule for a interaction / product designer is to be able to:
“Do not design for you. Design for your target user”. So I will make sure also to tell this : I’m sometimes not the right user for Canola things, and I do bend to the “target” users request because they are the more suitable ones to say it’s good or not. (Actually a lot of things were good to me, and I needed to changed)
With the tablets being the most versatile pocket-devices I know, a powerful, desktop-like UI seems more suitable.
Also, I seriously doubt that there is a relevant percentage of people who are not well trained in using desktop-like user interfaces. (And I’m talking about percentage of the overall population.) Statistics show this.
Simple cellphones? the Iphone? None of them are desktop oriented. and I don’t know but as product and interaction design I have a LOT of statistics that shows the opposite.
In my personal experience, new tablet users find Hildon very easy to use; I myself have to admit I sometimes simply close and restart Canola because I dont know how to return to the main screen. Other problems new users experience with Canolas UI were described elsewhere.
I agree with you in some points, but : Edit a wifi connection. Ask a real user to do so. I could tell you some more 15 to 20 simple tasks of simple users the are far off the best position. Also: the most of Canola problems comes for the fact that we “scaled” it down to fit to the device. And being honest : if you don’t know that your home button (one of the more useful buttons on hildon ui) brings you the home, open applications.. then it’s not so well designed and intuitive. For me (I receive user feedback from Canola I can tell you: the main problem comes from : media scanning, removed after several complaing against canola1 (coming as a installation wizard). Also the lack of visual feedback in a lot of operations, as well better Over the video ui (impossible to do today on gstreamer on the tablet) But we have it on libXine inside here, and of course the Scrolling list, that was our fault, to leave one parameter behind. Now we did real user testing, we are packaging a experimental testing list to users who didn’t have problems and for those with problems to validate before releasing.
Still I think that even those who were not enthusiastic about the article at tabletschool may love Canola as it is and use it as intended. Only the thought of having such an over-simplified UI instead of hildon everywhere on the NiTs is somewhat frightening.
I think you should note the point : this is to bring the end user. The one who think hildon is not good. Now imagine the good part of it all : you have the freedom to have the full hildon also. And more : you can still have your full desktop (KDE) / E17 ! :) that’s is what we would have that NO other app would :)
Think of over simplified UI as a way to provide a simple,fast and efficient way to do your needed task with easy. The hildon is exactly what you said. for those who need the desktop completeness on the go. There is space for both, but again : I can assure you : (not canola) A simple, task oriented, eye candy ready UI has a lot more audience.
@eric :
a) Minimal media focused UI is good, but abandoning hildon framework has come back and bitten you on many occasions ( problems with the OSK and failing to meet users expectations with the shift and Fn keys ). For being so “minimalist” it’s throwing off the hildon UI libraries also means that it consumes far more memory than necessary ( min 30MB under normal conditions ).
Hi Eric, the thing is we don’t say never abandoning it.. but just to let you know, it;’s not 30MB. In our Mamona based version (canola on top of mamona Nothing else, no hildon, nothing) we don’t use more than 17MB. The whole EFL stack has a memory footprint of 600kb, and we of course are using python, and then a lot of imagery. To multitask outside canola with another hungry app is complicated like the Browser. But remember : you fell almost no loading time between the more than 5 applications (complex ones like the podcast) that are instantly showed to you.
Then you point that we moved from hildon and got bitten. Yes, the hildon should be ready to provide extension to the other toolkits for simple things like the HW keyboard : / But we don’t stop for that, because as I said on the post the real goal is experimentation, is being different, is bringing more people on board.
and why dropped GTK+ ? let’s not say hildong, because we know hildon is quite a small layer on top of GTK. Well we dropped for the same reasons theres a Tsunami of activities to enable gtk to be flexible. It simply isn’t. Look at the gnome planet. look at how much proposals to have a scene component :)And why we picked up EFL? yes, a canvas with scene management.
c) I don’t care about power features… I care about *working* features and that is why I stopped using canola2 and went back to the built in media player. Too many regressions compared to the no-frills “Media Player”
No problems with that. We heard that a lot. And we are not ashamed. Why? We are a group of small guys, working on something like4 projects at the same time, Canola is only one.. so are we ashamed of the work done in the last 7 months? Not at all. Why we didn’t removed the beta label? because it needs more polishing and more work. Doing our widgets from zero, trying to do the right thing not hacks, having a nice, clean and really flexible design for the software and being able to have new guys helping with minimal time, I’m really proud of the guys. Last : being able to admit that SDL was not going to take us further (because of time limitations) and delaying for months the release because we needed to write the 16 bit version of the rendering engine… it was also a nice challenge and we took it. But the point is : We did it because we wanted to do in the other way. You can still use the simple media player, then install vagalume, mytube, a good podcast client, with a (now) solid download manager, then with the upcoming playlist feature I don’t think there will be much missing from the default media player.. and maybe it would be time to remove the beta label.. and drink a beer for that :)
Right now I would not call Canola “user centric” since being easier than the default NIT Hildon environment is like saying that someone is more intelligent than president Bush. Yes, it is easier but that ease has come at the expense of too many items that make NIT’s useful.
Again, it’s your opinion. If you ask the Canola users, the one who defined how it should works, I can make sure.. it was all based on the TARGET user. Not all users. So if you are a happy hildon UI user, and love it’s desktop visual, then again the message: canola is really not centered at you :) - the smile is to let clear that this is not rudeness or irony is just the thing. For example, iphone is not targeted at most of the Heavy users of NIT, or the Nomad player from creative is not target for the old FM radio freaks around here in Brazil, and like Slackware is not aimed at retards like me :) (ubuntu does the job for me, ubuntu is nice with me :))
And all the items that make NIt useful? they still there with the touch of one (hardware button) the home button! :)
And the last one :
Great info. I have a question though- As it appears that INdT has quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to the software it is developing, and given the success of Canola, what other software is in the works?
Well, the flexibility has one price : we are not inside the thing :) so you can imagine the installation madness :)
About other softwares : / sorry but I cannot tell about them. But there’s a lot of our work in the Bluetooth stack (blueZ) in python and so on, Canola and Carman are evolving and like in the Nokia car shown, they are being mixed, because… there’s a nice group of users that like to use canola for comuting! :) so we are hearing their critics since canola 1, and we have some incredible ideas for them. And believe: it’s more theme making then coding.. this is what I really feel proud about. To be able to have fast way to do nice things.
One area that users are begging to be addressed is Personal Information Management (specifically calendar and contact management). A quick survey of ITT would provide assurance that an effort by INdT to provide PIM software would be met with much enthusiasm.
Yeah, but I think this is not present in the Tablets since the beginning right? I thought the opened hand guys were doing something : / We are more multimedia when it comes to application, I think other guys would do a better work then us, and this for sure needs to be a great hildon works, to be fully integrated. But it’s nice to see somethings like the email client modest.. it really rocks.
So just to make clear, before people make assumptions, this are my opinions, as user and interaction designer focused on the NIT. Also, I believe in the NIT’s in more than just IT devices. I believe in the NIT as product platform. You can create other products from it. From remote controls to wine management to a security check tool, a in-car computer system and so on. :)
I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said.
Canola has and continues to be a great and essential part of my IT experience. I actually use canola more than any other bit of the tablet.
The beauty of open source is that you can take it or leave it, for the canola haters, please leave it and stop moaning.
April 16th, 2008 at 7:57 ama) Minimal media focused UI is good, but abandoning hildon framework has come back and bitten you on many occasions ( problems with the OSK and failing to meet users expectations with the shift and Fn keys ). For being so “minimalist” it’s throwing off the hildon UI libraries also means that it consumes far more memory than necessary ( min 30MB under normal conditions ).
c) I don’t care about power features… I care about *working* features and that is why I stopped using canola2 and went back to the built in media player. Too many regressions compared to the no-frills “Media Player”
Right now I would not call Canola “user centric” since being easier than the default NIT Hildon environment is like saying that someone is more intelligent than president Bush. Yes, it is easier but that ease has come at the expense of too many items that make NIT’s useful.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:04 amGreat info. I have a question though- As it appears that INdT has quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to the software it is developing, and given the success of Canola, what other software is in the works?
One area that users are begging to be addressed is Personal Information Management (specifically calendar and contact management). A quick survey of ITT would provide assurance that an effort by INdT to provide PIM software would be met with much enthusiasm.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:41 amJust a quick link on the subject (trying to please everyone):
http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2008/04/nothing-is-for.html
April 16th, 2008 at 9:49 amI feel I should take this opportunity to reply as I originally reacted on tabletschool, too. - I see your point and agree. The problem with the article at tabletschool is that, as I read it, it suggests that the Canola UI is in general much better than the well-established Hildon UI and should replace it as the NiTs standard UI.
April 16th, 2008 at 10:43 amThat’s what I felt was wrong. Hildon seems more “general purpose” whereas Canola is specialized for a certain, probably small group of users (doing simple tasks). With the tablets being the most versatile pocket-devices I know, a powerful, desktop-like UI seems more suitable. Also, I seriously doubt that there is a relevant percentage of people who are not well trained in using desktop-like user interfaces. (And I’m talking about percentage of the overall population.) Statistics show this. In my personal experience, new tablet users find Hildon very easy to use; I myself have to admit I sometimes simply close and restart Canola because I dont know how to return to the main screen. Other problems new users experience with Canolas UI were described elsewhere.
Still I think that even those who were not enthusiastic about the article at tabletschool may love Canola as it is and use it as intended. Only the thought of having such an over-simplified UI instead of hildon everywhere on the NiTs is somewhat frightening.
What triggered this post?
April 16th, 2008 at 11:52 amWho hates an “extra” application like Canola that no-one forced on them?
It would be great if the lists in Canola (e.g. in the YouTube plugin) could be used also with the rocker keys (or have scrollbar). The inertial scrolling is not quite a smooth as on iPhone and one easily selects items instead of scrolling which is very annoying.
April 16th, 2008 at 12:36 pmHi Maemo Developer:
Yes, we are adding this. The fact is that you are actually talking about the old devices. We went even further I already tested the new version with full Hardware support. You click select, you have a full music controller on any screen, you don’t click.. you have fullscrolling control.
The point was : We are touch application, so we wanted actually to improve the experience of the 770 guys, that have the old really resistive screen, so this will be handy for them.
The inertial scrolling was risky and our implementation was really problematic. For the n770 there will be no way but our new implementations improved A LOT the scrolling / reduced the error rate of unwanted click/selections.
We are now just making the debian packages (it changes some core things) to give more users (outsides) now the new list to see what they think, and actually there’s a full “customize your list behavior” menu, where if the user don;’t like the default we will ask him to find the best settings and send them to us. With a measure of several different profiles, we will be able to make a real usable list.
*problem foreseen : women with nails : it’s funny to watch the usability test videos, and also generally woman had a funny way to touch the screens even the resistive ones..
BR
April 16th, 2008 at 1:48 pmThanks for the response Marcelo.
It’s really funny to see my article on Planet Maemo: seven hearts and seven thumbs down. Normally my articles get no response at all, or maybe a couple of votes either way.
I think this is topic has touched a nerve for many people. There is a lot of disagreement over who exactly the tablets are meant to serve, and what their ultimate goal is.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:06 pmIn response to ossi1967, I just have to disagree, I think the Canola interface is much easier to use for most people than Hildon.
When I showed Canola to some non-technical people they were able to guess what to do, something they couldn’t with Hildon. I agree it’s not a good comparison as Canola’s current form is so limited, but would a typical user really use much more than multimedia? Obviously the web browser, and perhaps email as well, but not much beyond that.
There are statistics on how many people use Windows, but there are no statistics about how comfortable people are with using it, or how much it restricts their ability to access commonly used features. How many people actively CHOOSE to use Windows, as opposed to having it forced upon them?
In any case, desktops and laptops are meant for long computing sessions, but a portable device is much more casual. It’s very rare that ordinary people spend hours at a time using a portable device, usually it’s just quick bursts of a few minutes. Apart from anything else, the battery life of a portable device severely restricts how long you can use it.
“Only the thought of having such an over-simplified UI instead of hildon everywhere on the NiTs is somewhat frightening.”
To me the idea of continuing with Hildon as the default UI is somewhat depressing.
Depressing that all these great things the tablets can do are missed by most users because they’re hidden away too deeply.
Other less-capable devices such as the iPod Touch will get all the limelight and sales not because they’re better but because they make their best features more visible.
Time and time again I’ve had users contact me on ITS and YouTube because they can’t work out how to do something, and I have to direct them to some deeply buried settings menu that no one would ever find by themselves.
You see Canola as over-simplified, but I see Hildon as over-complicated. I think the reason we disagree is because we have totally different ideas about the kind of person that would be a potential tablet user.
April 16th, 2008 at 2:32 pm@Krisse: Indeed, the problem is not Canola, is not NIT, is not being simple or complex. Is the person’s perception of the world. It’s the ability to realize (and be fine with that) that they are maybe in a niche market. That maybe the “popular” market has some “stupid” neeeds, but they are majority, they can drive higher profits, and forgeting about linux for one second, profits is the goal of any Commercial company. Being popular with the biggest amount of people is the goal for any company, then comes the challenge :are you capable of being a clean minded person to admit that you are maybe “too much” to be used as “target user”? are you capable of admitting that a user doesn’t want to see pages and pages of system log? Are you able to admit that you probably love deeply nested menus with lot’s of feature, and the end user wants just a couple of simple things to get things done without visual bureaucracy ?
I ask this, because I suffered a lot from this.. it’s just too hard. And I’m not a regular user. I’m really a power user. And to turn of my “assumptions” is really a must for my work. So I humbly listen to the users, because they can guide stuff (not always create) because as lauro pointed: (from a ten face’s of innovation review) :
the danger of listening too closely to customers. “If I had asked my customers what they wanted,” Ford said, “they would have said a faster horse.” Customers don’t envision the future, they inform the present.
I think you guys got the point :)
April 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm@krisse:
There are two basic points we disagree about. Before I start, though: If I use “Canola” here, I usually refer to the type of UI it introduces, not to the application itself.
A) Is a Canola-style UI really more user friendly?
I still think it isn’t if it’s the tablets main UI. You say people don’t find “hidden” settings in Hildon? Well, they wouldn’t find them in Canola either, most probably because they wouldn’t be there in the first place and we’d all have to live with standard settings.
You say “Depressing that all these great things the tablets can do are missed by most users because they’re hidden away too deeply.”? In a Canola-style UI, you’d hide away even more of these great things, because simplicity always means less options.
I do believe that by running TS, you a lot about how people handle the Tablets. I only know a few people who either bought Tablets themselves or use mine every now and then. But my personal experience is that none of them have problems doing what they want with the current UI. I also noticed that the few “How do you…?” and “Why can’t I …?”-questions I heared at all were asked by those who were computer experts. People with little or no computer knowledge didn’t have usablility related problems at all. This is probably because they expect less and just happily tap on whatever menu/button comes up.
The point you make about people not using Windows on their desktops by choice is not valid here: Sure they don’t (usually), but that’s not relevant. The point is they know how to operate Menus and checkboxes. Nobody is used to floating bubbles. Usability is about giving people what they expect, what they are used to.
Again, one thing I feel still goes unnoticed is what I might describe as “scalability”. Canola works for what it does. As the Tablet’s main UI it would work as long as you have, say, 4-5 applications and scroll through them the way you scroll through Canola’s main screen now. What if you have 20, 30 or more applications? What if you have a lot of functions in an application? Can you imagine Gnumeric with a Canola-Style interface?
B) The niche-myth (or what the Tablets are for)
Here we go again: If we could only make the Tablets more like a multimedia player, they’d sell better. I guess if Nokia had wanted to produce a media player (or a “browser-only”-device), they’d have done so. The thing with the Tablets is that they are basically everything and nothing. That’s their USP, that’s their strength, that’s what sets them apart from the competition. They can do everything, they’re not made for something special. (Just like desktop PCs.) Reducing them to “core functions” via their UI basically means dropping the whole product line and creating a new one.
I don’t quite understand the emotional “but Apple will get more attention/sell better”-thing among those who own a Tablet. Yes, sure they’ll sell better, the way GSM-phones will always sell better than ham radio equipment. It’s a different thing, a different market, different audiences. You don’t make a better ham radio equipment by removing all the complicated technical stuff and adding ringtones and games.
Yes, it may be a smaller market, yes, it may be a niche… But what’s wrong with that? The fact that only a few people need a device like the Tablet doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. If the Tablets moved out of this niche, we’d have to turn to another product that will (hopefully) fill it again… And then, would we start the same discussion again until *this* device leaves the niche? What would be the point?
If you say “but would a typical user really use much more than multimedia?”, I firmly believe your “typical user” bought the wrong device and would be much better of with a real media player. Whatever “typical uses” you might find for the tablet - there’s a device out there that does it better (or soon will be) because it’s specialized (and limited) to do just this.
So whatever UI the tablets have, it needs to reflect this open, desktop-like, “all-and-nothing” nature. It needs to be OK for those who use it as a media player, but it also needs to be OK for those who never listen to music but run Gnumeric and take notes during business meetings. It probably will not be perfect for either of these two groups, but as long as it’s OK for them, it’s the best we can get.
And that’s what Hildon is.
April 17th, 2008 at 3:16 am@krisse:
There are two basic points we disagree about. Before I start, though: If I use “Canola” here, I usually refer to the type of UI it introduces, not to the application itself.
A) Is a Canola-style UI really more user friendly?
[/quote]
…I still think it isn’t if it’s the tablets main UI. You say people don’t find “hidden” settings in Hildon? Well, they wouldn’t find them in Canola either, most probably because they wouldn’t be there in the first place and we’d all have to live with standard settings.
[/quote]
Disagree point :) : Actually all “settings” are centralized. So you do find easily because they are all there. About more features, indeed. But comes again the fact: what matters for the type of user the simple ui focus, is only the crucial not the amount. It reminds me a old internal joke about kde. It has ALL settings you can imagine. Is that what task oriented/casual users want? I don’t belive so.
[quote]
You say “Depressing that all these great things the tablets can do are missed by most users because they’re hidden away too deeply.”? In a Canola-style UI, you’d hide away even more of these great things, because simplicity always means less options.
[/quote]
Agree point : LESS OPTION!, Crucial ones, less clutter, more of your simple task done.
[quote] This is probably because they expect less and just happily tap on whatever menu/button comes up.
[/quote]
Agree point: Oscar, that’s the whole point. IT is what they have now. There’s not a simple UI version to compare. And canola, as it is a media player cannot be used here. That’s why I’m using simple UI.
[quote] … (usually), but that’s not relevant. The point is they know how to operate Menus and checkboxes. Nobody is used to floating bubbles. Usability is about giving people what they expect, what they are used to. ..
[/quote]
Agree point : But the point you didn’t got was not only about usability (which I can show you problems but of course user always learn how to work around them if possible, after all they’ve paid for a expensive gadget) the point is : User experience. It’s much more than just usability. It’s having a nice, pleasant experience, a simple way to accomplish a simple task without needing to learn / fear anything. It’s less dialogs, more done, It’s less buttons, less fields, it’s less conventional it much more “fun”. Then we go back to the whole point: It’s about the kind of users. As you, I cannot use the people around me as example (I’m surrounded by people who are either experts or power users or at least heavy users). We are talking here about another class, the “trend” followers, or something like the “I need the last gadget” guy. Not a very technical or even that used to computers. It’s the kind of guy who buys the iPhone for it’s experience, even knowing all it’s problems(and they are many). It’s people who prefer to buy the ipod over a simple, cheaper and most of the time MORE powerful device. This is more common in europe for example. People do chose other things, but in most of the world, if they can afford, they will go with the one with best experience / best status-empowering brand.
[quote]
Again, one thing I feel still goes unnoticed is what I might describe as “scalability”. Canola works for what it does. As the Tablet’s main UI it would work as long as you have, say, 4-5 applications and scroll through them the way you scroll through Canola’s main screen now. What if you have 20, 30 or more applications? What if you have a lot of functions in an application? Can you imagine Gnumeric with a Canola-Style interface?
[/quote]
Ok, here we go again. Oskar: Canola was made to be media center (canola1). And for you to know, even this being not said before. Canola2 indeed was designed to hold any application. We do have designs for: Email, messenger, Browser, Rss, Paint, Games, and so on. So I can assure you, it does scale. As we Canola is a side project, we didn’t have time to do all other things, but if you take a look in the developer package, you will see how flexible it is.
But about Gnumeric : THATS the point (if there was a Simple UI ) Do I want something like gnumeric? To be honest? That would be really, really low on my list. And Even for the power users? We ported gnumeric since the 770 to the tablets, we had all download numbers, so I can say to you it’s what I consider a too ” specific” user. But, indeed, it would be completely possible. BUT of course a simpler spreadsheet, and maybe with this hardware it would not be so usable due to the nature of spreadsheets. Then we go back to the point. Using gnumeric without a stylus is painful. So if we defend a no-stylus device, how would we design it to be a spreadsheet? app? I think people that Use spreadsheet on their tablet would love a BETTER PIM, before having a full feature tablet.
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B) The niche-myth (or what the Tablets are for)
Here we go again: If we could only make the Tablets more like a multimedia player, they’d sell better. I guess if Nokia had wanted to produce a media player (or a “browser-only”-device), they’d have done so. The thing with the Tablets is that they are basically everything and nothing. That’s their USP, that’s their strength, that’s what sets them apart from the competition. They can do everything, they’re not made for something special. (Just like desktop PCs.) Reducing them to “core functions” via their UI basically means dropping the whole product line and creating a new one.
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But what if the product as it is.. is not working? Imagine that scenario? Imagine a product being dropped, and there would be actually none, in your scenario another project comes up :)
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Yes, it may be a smaller market, yes, it may be a niche… But what’s wrong with that? The fact that only a few people need a device like the Tablet doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. If the Tablets moved out of this niche, we’d have to turn to another product that will (hopefully) fill it again… And then, would we start the same discussion again until *this* device leaves the niche? What would be the point?
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Well Oskar, I think you missed one point: Products needs to sell to be continued. The Tablet is not AT ALL A BAD product. For me it’s like a dream product. Because it’s a product that generates products, it’s a ” Meta-product ” :)) So the point is not about “niche” then, it’s about survival. Do we have enough users to justify it? I really wanted to know, but looking as a community guy, looking at (ALL) applications downloads numbers, I imagine there’s not too much users out that. UNfortunately. and Why? Because for more than it has today, it’s a little bit over complicated.
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If you say “but would a typical user really use much more than multimedia?”, I firmly believe your “typical user” bought the wrong device and would be much better of with a real media player. Whatever “typical uses” you might find for the tablet - there’s a device out there that does it better (or soon will be) because it’s specialized (and limited) to do just this.
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Again: don’t compare or think that the others behave, buy or act like you are used to. In the US the tablets were sold in the a bundle with routers. Talking to some users, they said (it’s a networked media player - mediastreamer) others said : it’s just a browser. Others figured out the Nokia site, and downloaded some apps : (actually it has a nice screen, it’s a nice video player).
So, did they buy the wrong device? Maybe. But you are totally correct that a lot don’t buy it. Because they know it’s not for them. Then they buy other things. Then you see other thing’s numbers, and then it comes the whole discussion: Can the tablet survive with the users we have know? Do we need more? How to add more users? How to make them comfortable? But agreeing totally with you on this one : how to keep the user base we have now?
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So whatever UI the tablets have, it needs to reflect this open, desktop-like, “all-and-nothing” nature. It needs to be OK for those who use it as a media player, but it also needs to be OK for those who never listen to music but run Gnumeric and take notes during business meetings.
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Year, power of choice. 100% match here. And that’s the point.
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It probably will not be perfect for either of these two groups, but as long as it’s OK for them, it’s the best we can get.
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Here goes the point: “OK” ? I don’t think a leading company wants to be just “ok”. I don’t think a company famous for being the driver of mobile usability in the 90’s want’s to be just ok. At all.
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And that’s what Hildon is.
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100% agree. It’s ok. And again: Hildon is GTK+. The problem is not ” hildon” the problem is more the lack of flexibility of GTK. No wonder why if you look in gnome planet you going to see at least a couple of post about “we need to evolve, we need scene management, we need more visual effects, we need to be able to have overlapping widgets! we need to have TRANSPARENCY”.
And for those who don’t know: Hildon is from series90 phones : 7700 and 7710 (google for that).
In the end: We can finish this with : It’s a really problematic situation, almost a dead end, and the future will tell.
April 17th, 2008 at 4:24 am