[Adium-devl] Watching a first time Adium user for 5 minutes

[Evan Schoenberg]

Some food for thought and discussion:

A recent Mac convert using Adium for the first time... he's an AIM,  
MSN, and Yahoo user.  He'd never heard of Adium, though while it was  
downloading he asked, "So can I use a bunch of different names with  
this?" so I suspect he'd heard of multiprotocol clients somewhere.

1) Ran the app from the disk image.  I don't know if he would have  
read text, but Adam Bett's cute graphics work didn't do it for him.

2) Adium launches.  Clicks through first run wizard first screen.   
Looks at the service drop down, clicks it to see the list, leaves it  
on AIM.  Types AIM user name / pass, but he mistypes his password.   
Adium throws a message *from Gaim* about invalid password -- looks  
like the string in libgaim oscar prpl has changed, and we haven't  
updated to match.  He therefore hits Back and adds a second AIM  
account w/ the same name to get the password right.  Fixing the  
string matchup should fix that oddity. Other than that, from launch  
to online is incredibly smooth, with no problems.

3) Connects immediately.  He scrolls up and down in his buddy list.   
He's confused that his group ordering is different than it was in  
iChat.  Can we get the serverside group info by any chance?  Failing  
that, I think we should have the default sort (status sort)  
alphabetize groups, perhaps.

4) Growl Installation window pops up.  He eyes it.  "What is this?"   
Me: "Read it, then tell me."  He reads it, then looks up, "I have  
absolutely no idea.  Some sort of other program.  Should I install  
it?"  Me: "Well, based on what you read, what do you think?"  He  
shrugs and clicks cancel. I know (but he doesn't) that he's going to  
see it again on next launch... I wonder if we're just going to annoy  
people into installing Growl.  The text in the install window could  
probably me made more mom-and-newb-friendly.  I wonder to myself if  
he will ever check out the Events preferences.

4) "Can I do video chat with this?"  Me: "Um, no, you'd have to load  
iChat. Do you use video chat regularly?"  Him: "No, I just use it to  
talk to Ria (a mutual friend he also sees every day)."

5) I watch him scroll up and down his incredibly long list, looking  
for the online people.  The group at the top is "recent buddies" and  
it contains 1 online person and about 70 offline people; he has to  
get past those to see online people. Me: "Would you prefer not to see  
people who are offline?"  Him: "Yeah, I can't talk to them... what  
can I do?"  Me: "Look at the View menu." Success.  This makes me  
question showing offline people by default... I certainly don't leave  
Show Offline Contacts enabled.  Does anyone?

6) "How do I add more names?"  Me: "Yours or someone else's?" Him:  
"Mine."  Me: "Click Preferences from the Adium menu". He goes to  
Preferences.  The Accounts tab is already selected... though it isn't  
first.  Possibly a reasonable default, actually, though a bit  
nonstandard for it not to be first if we're going to go that route.   
He clicks Plus, adds a Yahoo account with password, looks at it go to  
Online, clicks Plus, adds an MSN account, looks at it go Online, then  
scrolls down his contact list to see the new people shown.  "Awesome!  
That was easy."

6) He opens a message window to a contact on his list, types, and  
hits enter. "Pretty."  I leave him to his conversation.

-Evan
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