Re: Initial survey discussions - organization

["Pete St. Onge" <pete_st_onge@iname.com>]

I've been quite intrigued by a lot of the discussion we've already had
in the last week or so. The idea of 'watching' a user use linux is
quite  an interesting one, and would likely be a good way of getting at
the functionality of the OS, particularly for the kernel developers.

Roger Dingledine wrote:
> I guess it
> depends how many of the surveys we think we can get people to
> answer. :} Perhaps also we could have several versions of the survey
> (experienced long, experienced short, beginner long, beginning
> short).
     Yeah, that could work. Keeping Simon's suggestion that we focus on
the survey itself in mind, perhaps a good bet here is to start working
on the 'themes' or sections that our survey(s) will deal with. Once we
have these, we could then decide on the questions themselves as well as
the organization and then the mechanics behind it (which, let's face it,
is the fun part :-)
     So, to throw it out, how's this? I may be sounding like a broken
record, but given the goals of the survey, the focus below is more
applications-oriented than on the OS (mind you, the LinuxUserCam would
likely be a better bet with the OS, methinks). I'm not sure that I see
all of these 'themes' reflected in one single survey; again, I feel that
we might lose many of the 'average' users by taking this approach, and
perhaps these are the people we want to reach out the most to.

User Info
     Experience with OS, which OS used, how long, what uses

Word processors
     Experience with wp's, which ones used, how long
     Uses: Which of these are important / not important
        WYSISYG: 1-4
        
Spreadsheets
     Experience with ss's, which ones used, how long
     Uses: Which of these are important / not important
        Carrying out simple calculations 1-4
        Being able to copy formulas across a range 1-4
	Using predefined formulas (ie. Average, Min, Max, etc.) 1-4
        Being able to read and save other formats 1-4
        Being able to do some statistical analysis 1-4

Databases
     Experience with db's, which ones used, how long
     Uses: Which of these are important / not important

Programming Languages
     Experience with pl's, which ones used, how long
     Uses: Which of these are important / not important
        Simple scripts to automate common tasks 1-4

System Utilities

... and so on. What do people think?

     Cheers,

     Pete

-- 
Pete St. Onge - McGill U.  Limnology - Fun with Ropes & Buckets
pete_st_onge@iname.com         http://wwp.mirabilis.com/4322052