Re: list o' importants

[virtanen <hvirtane@cc.jyu.fi>]

On Wed, 1 Jul 1998 EAMorical@aol.com wrote:

> 
>  Just some ideas to follow up Pete's post and to get my feet wet. 
>  
>  Might I suggest grouping the questions into categories such as Price Issues
> placing (cost, hardware),(cost, software) and (cost, upgrades)(slight rename
> for    consistancy) together. I would be willing to give it a try. 
>  
>  Sincerely
> 
>  Bob Hopcroft
> 

The above idea seems to be a good one in my opinion. 

I think that all the questions invented so far are relevant to someone. 

But we perhaps need a way to group somehow the questions and also group
somehow the people who will answer the survey. 

These two groupings might also be connected somehow. It might be the case
that for one type of SEUL-user some group of questions is not so
relevant. 

How would it sound to start asking as a first categorizing of questions
the general uses/tasks of computers/OSs of the user (to make the uses as
the base of categorizing)? It might be more useful (and easier to get
the answers) to know what the people are doing with the computer than to
know exactly who the people are? (For example I don't like the marketing
strategy of some companies, who want to know all kinds of personal about
me, before they start telling me, what kind of products they can offer.) 

For example:

1. Work (productivity): 

1.1. Cad-design   
1.2. Database
1.3. Scientific calculations
1.4. Wordprocessing
1.5. Programming
1.6. Study computing
1.7. Communication using the net
1.8. Building a network
1.9. Teaching computing
1.10. Study languages
... 
More categories to be added by the people first surveyed.


2. Hobby, entertainment:

2.1. Playing games
2.2. Creating new linux-programs
2.3. Planning SEUL-surveys using the net
... 

More categories to be added by the people first surveyed.

(Somehow it so clear and simple that any OS should be cheap, reliable,
easy to use, fastdeveloping, powerful, full of new possibilities and
advancements of technology that it isn't necessary to ask, if the
would-be-users want these qualities or not... Would it generate
much helpful knowledge, if we knew, which of these are the most important
for which type of user? Or is it more useful first to know, which kind of
users exist and how many?) 

My general idea is to find out somehow, what is the current situation of
computing (with microcomputers), find out next what are the general 
problems, which people wanted currently to get solved, find out next if
linux could be a part of solutions of current problems.  

This leads to the next step of categorizing: which kind of problems and
priorities of solving of those each type of user has in each category. 
If the categories are cleverly planned the survey doesn't need to be so
big, but to find different kind of users to invent the categories we maybe
needed to be quite clever?

(It really might be the case, that computers are now mature enough so that
the problem of speed or power for some tasks is already solved... Like
cars of sixties were already fast enough for family use... 286 pc with dos
and wp 5.1 is as good or even better for writing a novel as 300 mHz
Pentium II fitted with linux and applix 4.3.7! ) 


can't invent more at this time... 20:50 local time... going home to my
linux-machine

hvirtane