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

[Christopher Forsythe]

On Jan 26, 2007, at 7:04 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.


I'd be fine with us ditching what we do now and just going internet  
enabled dmg or zip. Ya, the dmg is pretty, but if it's going to cause  
problems like this I'd be ok with ditching it.

>
> 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.
>

Did the error pop up from a separate window?

> 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.
>

Agreed

> 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.
>

Ya, I've thought that something like this would do:

Adium would like to install Growl. Growl can be used to give you  
quick information in a bubble, sort of like what you see when you  
turn change the sound volume.

I think comparing it to something similar could help.

>
> 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?
>

I think we need to look at a few things here. Offline should be not  
displaying by default I think, but we should also have a search box  
at the bottom of the contact list. I wonder if he knew who he was  
looking for and could have typed it in to find it.

> 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."

A plus symbol at the bottom next to the proposed search box would be  
cool for this possibly.

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


Neat :)

So I take it he liked it overall?