Originally Posted by wazd

got the task

Originally Posted by qgil

???

What do you mean?

Originally Posted by allnameswereout

It surely is useful (not boring) in Amsterdam. My intention in Amsterdam wasn't to use it as a toy, or for fun. It was meant to be used as an aid instead of using maps or asking people around (luckily people in Amsterdam are nice folks). There are all kind of little and small pearls happening in Amsterdam. They're announced in the paper, and an address is listed. Instead of using a map, I'd use a GPS system instead. Faster and easier. Unfortunately, see the earlier message...

Aesthetically I find Maemo-Mapper not nice. But that is overcomable.

Next I get all kind of problems: cannot get fix easily, the maps aren't preloaded, I cannot find the POI, and the interface has all kind of technical terms I just don't want to know about (yet). I've come to the conclusion Maemo-Mapper is more for power users while I want an application which Just Works (tm). Usability-wise it isn't there yet, at least not for me. Usability is important for me, especially on a device like the NIT. I believe the Maemo-Mapper guys have a lot to learn in this regard. In the meantime I'll stick with what works for me. Out of box experience!!

It all starts when I open the program for the first time. A popup tells me it appears I run the software for the first time, and asks me to read the Help file. That isn't promising. Probably means its complex software. Next I get a configuration popup with 6 tabs. Intimidating. The first one asks me to select my GPS. Instead, the program should have known my N810 has a GPS and by default select this because most people with a N810 want it this way. Because the application doesn't do this I start to distrust its default settings. I check if I have /dev/pgps and yes, I do, so I selected this. The rest I leave intact although I'd like to use Wayfinder's POI database. Then I downloaded a list of repositories. It now defaults to Yahoo. I don't know if I want that. I want the best one available for my country (The Netherlands), no questions asked. I have 8 choices instead. Now I select Google Street because I know maps.google.com and Google Earth a bit and know they are of good quality (although I'm not a fan of Google's privacy policies). Now I see Europe, and its searching for a GPS receiver. I have A-GPS enabled. The icon of the GPS in systray appears and disappears, while the application says searching for GPS receiver. There is a thunderstorm and I'm going to quit using the NIT, leaving the device on. Maybe it has a fix in an hour or so... oh wait, it now gets an error it cannot connect to the GPS server. Maybe if I start Wayfinder first...? Yes, now its establishing GPS fix.

Interestingly, I now notice /usr/sbin/gpsd is running but it says /usr/sbin/gpsd -n -N -F /tmp/.gpsd_ctrl_sock /dev/pgp while Maemo-Mapper uses /dev/pgps. I don't even have a /dev/pgp. My /dev/pgps is a symlink to /dev/pts/0. Something seems very wrong here, but I know the gpsd was started by Wayfinder... sigh

I made a symlink from /dev/pgps to /dev/pgp just to be sure. I also read the manual and made it set to BlueTooth with no furthermore settings. This is totally illogic to me and a prime example of the usability issues this program has!

Just to make sure, I don't know who the Maemo-Mapper authors are, and I certainly don't mean to offend anyone. All I do is express myself in honesty. I do suggest in a more broad sense some kind of way to gather user experiences. I've once read a report about this which was very good. A professor would have GNOME and KDE installed on a standard, user-friendly end-user system. Now, someone would describe their first name, their past user experiences, their employment, their hobbies, and what they use a computer normally for. Next, the user starts to use the DE and writes down on the moment their experience. This includes a lot of subjective aspects like their feelings, their character as person, and so on. Afterwards one is able to read, besides subjectiveness, their experience and you can replay it. You're able to empathize with the user, and you can follow their logic based on the (albeit still limited) facts you know about the user. You can then translate this into a usability report, and feedback to the software. This paper was published a few years ago, and featured on Slashdot.org & OSnews.com. I'd love to see these principles gathered in a project; perhaps similar or contributing to openusability.org. Perhaps there already is such a thing for maemo, but what I also mean is besides a Bugzilla a database which includes usability related issues or even simply experiences. If there are sets of guidelines for such database the raw data can be easier parsed than say a discussion thread.

Originally Posted by allnameswereout

maemo.org is not very usable on the NIT. It doesn't detect if a user is using a NIT and act on that; whereas many websites start doing this for the iPhone. If you want to start something similar for the NIT you have to give the right example. I propose you investigate this possibility (I haven't, cannot).

Originally Posted by GeneralAntilles

UA detection is a bad plan. The way it should be done is to design the website so it works well on a variety of screen and CPU sizes.

This isn't easy to do, but the end result will be a faster, cleaner, easier website for everybody.

UA detection just leads to more brokenness for both groups.

Anyway, I've got some ideas for this, but they'll need to wait until I get back to a real computer (end of August). I may start with a wiki style to mock some stuff up.

Get ready, X-Fade.

/me sharpens his Official maemo.org Team Sharpened Poking Stick.

Originally Posted by allnameswereout

True, but I've seen both.

Originally Posted by allnameswereout

Does X-Fade read this thread? Maybe in a chat or Wiki it is easier to brainstorm than on a forum. After chat, summary/conclusions can then be written on forum.