Auto-launching of applications

[Scott Kitterman]

On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:40:10 -0500 Mackenzie Morgan <macoafi at gmail.com> 
wrote:
>On Sunday 22 February 2009 11:59:50 Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> Print out a screenshot, actual size, of the panel containing the
>> updates-available icon. Show it to fifty people who've used computers
>> before but haven't seen Ubuntu before, individually, and ask them what
>> that particular icon means.
>> 
>> Out of those fifty people, how many people do you think will guess it
>> has anything to do with software updates? Two of them, perhaps? Three?
>> 
>> If your benchmark for of "those who do have proper icon observation
>> skills" covers only a tiny proportion of the target population, it's a
>> useless and disingenuous benchmark.
>
>Can the screenshot include the tooltip that will certainly show up when 
the 
>user moves their mouse over it?  If I saw a random icon suddenly appear in 
the 
>notification area, I would want to know why, and so I would put my mouse 
over 
>it to wait for the tooltip to tell me.
>
... and even if the user doesn't know what it is the first time they see 
it, that doesn't mean they need something thrown up at them every time.

What is perhaps optimal for initial discovery, is almost always overkill 
for regular use.

Scott K