Usability Review of OpenMoko GTK+ Applications

[Knight Walker]

Before I begin, I want to say that I don't have much experience with the
new OpenMoko firmware. I had my hands on a Neo 1973 for about five
minutes at a LUG meeting. However I do have a good bit of experience
with other phones and with dealing with people who have other phones.

On Tue, 2008-03-11 at 15:31 +0000, Thomas Wood wrote: 
> I think there is plenty of space for a close button "X" to the right.
> The problem with using the power button is that it is completely
> unobvious to new users. Not to mention it's not particularly easy to
> use.

True, but if the hardware buttons are difficult, would having the close
button on the right be difficult for south-paws?

> I would suggest moving them to the details page. As long as the
> switching between list and details is quick enough, I think this
> wouldn't be a problem.

Conceivably. But once people get past the newbie stage, they tend to
value ease-of-use and quickness in their interfaces over simplicity.
Making someone go to a details page before they can send a text message
may irk some.

> I think this is a good point. Perhaps the main problem I have is that
> new users find it very difficult to locate the details button. Perhaps
> we need to make it more obvious. How about replacing the new button with
> edit, and moving new into a menu? Presumable Edit will be used much more
> often than New.

> Interesting, I guess I rarely look at my call history anyway. You can't
> do any thing with it, so I don't really see what it's usefulness is.

I look at mine all the time. My current phone (a Nokia) has what I
consider an advanced call history screen. Each of the three lists
(Missed, Received, Dialed) holds between 10 and 20 numbers, and each
entry keeps the last 5 or so times that number called or was called. It
helps me differentiate between a wrong number (generally one call) and a
friend using some other phone (repeated calls). It's also useful when
arguing with someone about the time you called on such-and-such date.
This is in addition to options for each number (Call, send message,
Save, etc).

> Such as? I didn't want to make it too complicated here. Phone, E-mail
> and Address and Company seemed the most likely used fields to me.

Neither do I (Or anyone else I imagine) but peoples' use of the Contacts
database will be many and varied. For me, it starts with a name and a
number, then expands to e-mail address, ringtone, work phone, home
phone, address, website, IM name(s), etc. And that's just for personal
contacts. For businesses it ends up somewhere around name, address,
website, phone, phone2, fax, category (restaurant, hobby shop, retail
store, etc) note(s) (generally directions and/or hours of operation).

And yes, I remember how to get to my friends' houses and it doesn't
generally matter what company someone works for, but as soon as I beam a
contact to someone who doesn't have that information, their eyes light
up. I think this would be something to encourage (Within privacy and
security bounds, of course).

Some of the ideas for having it only display filled-in fields is a great
one. The only way I can see that being a problem is if an import put a
space in every field that didn't have data in it already.

My point is that the Contacts app needs to be flexible. Newbies are only
newbies so long.

> Personally, I can't really see how this makes sense in a contacts
> application. Keeping it simple as possible was my main goal.

See above. Generally, whenever there's a note that I want to add that
doesn't have a field for it, I add it as a note.

> I can't see the link between high resolution and stylus usability.
> Surely higher resolution makes it even more difficult to be accurate!

I like the idea of making that notification area bring up a
finger-friendly area with easy access to the things that I do a lot of
(e.g. turning BlueTooth to discoverable so someone can beam me a file;
turning GPS on/off to save battery, same with Wifi). I've used
touch-screen devices since the original Palm Pilot, and I'm pretty good
with my aim, even when the phone is moving, but I realize many (perhaps
most) others aren't. This seems like a good compromise.

-KW