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

[Colin Barrett]

On Jan 26, 2007, at 5:04 PM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

> 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.

Not sure this is really our issue. It's a problem with the Disk Image  
format itself (see the gigantic flamewar thread on macsb).

> 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.

We should get that fixed before 1.0, for sure.

Are we literally just doing string comparisons? Are we leveraging the  
gettext system at all? It might be possible to include an "Adium"  
translation of Gaim to make things a bit easier on us in this respect.

> 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.

Maybe, maybe not. I don't think Gaim currently does. It may not even  
be stored on the server. We should probably have the default sort  
alphabetize groups, definitely.

> 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.

The Growl installation window blows. How about something like:

Title: "Do you want to allow Adium to show visual notifications?"
Body: "This requires installing Growl, a 3rd party framework, <perhaps  
more text about growl here>"

> 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)."

*shakes fist*

> 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?

Uh yeah I've been wondering about this too. What in the world is that  
doing on by default? Does iChat have it? What about MSN, what do they  
have? If they're different, perhaps those defaults should be set up on  
a heuristic, based on what accounts they add, and in what order.

UI idea that popped into my head to consider: hover over a group and  
the offline contacts for it show up. In fact, it might even be neat to  
just show available contacts, and to have away and idle people show up  
in the hovered state. Something like that would certainly make *my*  
life easier (I have a zillion people on my list).

I don't know if he would have found the view menu, or even that menu  
option (It's a bit cluttered in there) on his own. Not having room for  
toolbar items is really frustrating. Perhaps we should consider some  
buttons on the bottom (including a gear menu). See Mail.app in the  
bottom left for an example.

> 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."

Yes, that process is incredibly smooth. Go us :) We had a discussion  
about that a while back -- Maybe accounts should be on the left, with  
a vertical separator between it and General. Accounts really isn't a  
preference pane, but we're putting it in our preferences window for  
usability reasons.

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

Very cool stuff, very insightful! We should see if we can find someone  
who was using MSN Mac and see what their first run experience is.

-Colin