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Desktop Adapted for Dad (The Linux Box)
Adam Trickett sets
up a Debian/KDE system for his father, in this Linux Box article.
"My father is in his late 60s, and has never used a computer before,
though he has seen others use them. There are a lot of people that now fall
into this so called "silver surfer" category. Like most people his age, his
eyesight is less than perfect and he wears bi-focals. He has never used a
mouse or keyboard, and his co-ordination is significantly less than that of
an experience hacker."
(Log in to post comments)
Desktop Adapted for Dad (The Linux Box) Posted Apr 26, 2005 17:01 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] I'm surprised that he doesn't find that the best contrast on monitors comes from light colors on a dark background.
I miss the early version of Firefox which had the logo as the throbber, with the little fox actually running around the globe. It really taught you what the icon was supposed to be. I suspect that it was considered too adorable for a serious desktop, though.
Desktop Adapted for Dad - Colour Schemes Posted Apr 26, 2005 21:08 UTC (Tue) by ajt (guest, #29568) [Link] I did think of that, there is good evidence to suggest that yellow on black is a good colour combination, it's what is now used on bus and train destination boards in the UK. HOWEVER, most people are trained to read black text on white paper, and almost all web sites now use that combination too. SO for my father I went for the easy option, of pale colours, with LARGE black text, which seemed to work okay. As others have commented in other links to my article (which I hope you liked), icons are a real pain, and most people have no idea what they are supposed to be. While people say that Linux is too geeky to ever replace Windows on the desktop, I think people have to accept that most people don't get the desktop to start with, Windows or otherwise. I hope to produce a follow up article to this one, a few people have asked for more details. Drafts of this and additional artciles are on my home server: iredale.dyndns.org.
Desktop Adapted for Dad - Colour Schemes Posted Apr 26, 2005 22:03 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] I think black text on white paper is good, but ink and paper have far better contrast and resolution than any current computer display, and paper is also reflective rather than self-lighting. Accepting the color scheme from web sites is, unfortunately, currently a good reason to deal with dark on light.
One thing that might help with the large text is if you define a high-resolution mode and a low-resolution mode in the X config file; the user can switch between them with ctrl-alt-<keypad +> (or, I think, a more obvious keystroke). I don't know if X.org supports the smooth panning that OS X has, but it should be supported before long. (This is also a nice trick for showing things to people sitting further away from your computer.)
I agree that most people don't get the desktop. I don't really get it, myself, having entirely avoided that UI design so far. It seems like it mixes metaphors too much in the interests of trying to give screen space to documents rather than programs, and has too much space devoted to stuff you aren't doing anything with at the time.
Desktop Adapted for Dad - Colour Schemes Posted Apr 27, 2005 7:55 UTC (Wed) by ajt (guest, #29568) [Link] It's all a comprimise, and in the end I settled on something my father could use. In an ideal world I would like thinks to be different, for example I would love print quality resolution in a VDU, but we are not there yet. For changing resolution, I went for a single high resolution display (1024x768) and large fonts and icons, rather than a lower resolution display and normal (small) fonts and icons. It took some fiddling, but the result is large but clear text and icons, and my father can navigate about. In no way did I intend this article to be proscriptive, rather to open some peoples eyes into the problems that normal people suffer, and that with care and attention, you can adapt the desktop. Thanks for your comments - every little helps, they will help in a follow up article.
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