Comment 1669 for bug 1

Hi,

today I made an experiment which for me is difficult to do: I showed
Ubuntu 12.04 beta to a person (about 70 years old) completely new to
computers (only used the mouse to click through a set of photos so far
but that's it). I only know a very few people of this type because
most already have used computers.

I have seen a lot of funny and interesting behaviour (like hit the key
with the pipe character written on it instead of i ;-) ) - but here
the relevant results in very short:

a) The unity launchers - because of the size and because they are
quadratic were the only things easy to click for the person with low
mouse experience level. I am sure rectangular size - e.g. on
traditional taskbars would have been more difficult to click.

b) Without explanations - whatever Operating System - a complete
newbie person cannot learn only on his/her own. There needs to be a
person that explains. Not to talk about administration. A newbie with
low experience level will never administrate the computer on his/her
own. There must be a person with higher experience level helping out
and doing this for everyone who just wants to do a few things (or must
do). This draws a very important conclusion for me - confirming my
belly feeling somehow: The operating system must try to minimize the
annoyance for that guy behind everything. The person that needs to
help out the core family and a dozen of friends! - That usually are IT
people or at least the very technical interested guy/girl. SO FOCUS ON
THOSE PEOPLE MORE THAN YOU FOCUS ON THE NEW USERS! If the guy/girl
that needs to administrate, hates the OS he/she will install something
else and the user needs to adapt.

c) Most websites are far more complicated than the base operating
system. Navigating those sites is far more hassle. Simple example:
First attempt on the first found website was to click on a quadratic
bullet that was used there instead of the link text next to it - of
course the bullet looked more similar to the Unity launchers. ;-) -
Not to talk about organization of the websites (each different and
often information very hidden - in many cases the newbie would loose
the most hours here).

Best regards, Martin.