[ubuntu-art] Target Audience

[Thorsten Wilms]

On Mon, 2007-12-24 at 14:45 +0200, Henning Ludeke wrote:

> From a marketing point of view I agree with xl cheese:  Bias the GUI
> towards novice users.

What would that even mean, to bias the GUI towards novice users?
Even if we would agree on this, it leads nowhere if there are no
consequences that clearly follow.


> The discussion regarding upper levels - I think they'll all agree we
> want to make Ubuntu a real alternative to Vista & Leopard. 
> Thus the GUI needs to be as easy to use, yet more innovative in some
> ways as the same time.

I don't think ease of use and innovation are opponents.


> We need to make things at least as simple, cool, striking etc. as any
> competing GUI/OS to have new users 'get it', and 'get excited' about
> using the OS as an alternative that's as simple as windoze, yet comes
> with more under the hood. 

Please stop calling it windoze. I don't think Windows is that simple to
use and I hope that someday, free software including Ubuntu will step
out of the shadow of the giant. Your mind wouldn't be a bad place for
that to start ;)


> a) I think the reason windoze and tiger/leopard has a great market
> share has to do with ease of use.
>     Their GUI's are common denominators for millions of 'average'
> users. 

This suggest to me that you either don't know or chose to ignore
history. Windows is where it is due to a lucky deal with IBM, being
cheap and most important: the cleverness of having it shipped with
almost every machine.

I don't know the actual numbers, but the market share of OS X is likely
small compared to that of Windows. Would anyone in their right mind say
this is due to ease of use or some other quality of the products?

But actually this is all off-topic.

With this constant emphasis on ease of use - did anyone ever suggest to
make Ubuntu hard to use? ;)


> I'm new so let me know if I'm repeating things.

Yes, you do ;)

 
--
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/