SeeYou Mobile: How Steep the Learning Curve?

On Nov 10, 1:24 pm, Chip Bearden wrote:
Thanks to all who offered help. As background, I know Windows CE 2.0
and 3.0 fairly well but there are a few differences I'm seeing in
Pocket PC 2002. And my hardware (iPAQ 3950 series)is fine; it's the
guy playing with SeeYou that's the problem.

I've gotten a bunch of tips and tricks from various people, including
two sets of config files I want to install and play with. In the
meantime, some of my screen freezes were, it turns out, due to the
known bug (AAT Start/Finish) and many of the rest may be due to
impatience, as Richard dubbed it (tapping a button again before giving
the system time to respond, especially while waiting for the colored
topo map screen to refresh). I'm still getting occasional strange
behavior but it's dropped off.

I've also remapped many of the buttons, removed or disabled clicking
for some of the symbols, and gotten the nav boxes organized better to
my taste. Also received was a workaround for the "35 TPs but 200+
waypoints" problem that eliminates the need to scroll through hundreds
of waypoints to set up a task (though it does reinforce my belief that
some of the software developers just don't "get it" when it comes to
U.S. contest rules and the impact on UI and usability, and heard from
one highly ranked pilot who gave up on an application for this reason
alone).

I have mixed feelings over Richard's prediction that 320 hours this
winter will make me a power user of CU Mobile. That's actually about
what I'd heard from another pilot regarding WinPilot, so it's
reassuring. On the other hand, I think it's absolutely ridiculous that
it should take 20-30 times longer to learn an application than to
learn how to fly gliders. And it brings me back to my original analogy
about Photoshop. Anyone who's used the full version knows how
confusing it is to the uninitiated but how much power is available
once you master even a small fraction of the tools. The same should
not be true of soaring software. Chip Garner designed a great
application that still does most of what we all want for competition,
and that many of us are still using. The UI is intuitive and users can
be up and running after literally only a few minutes of instruction or
reading. Yeah, there are some "secrets" and oddities, but Glide
Navigator II (at least driven by a Cambridge vario/GPSNAV) is
powerful, a breeze to learn, and simple to use. CU Mobile is more
powerful still but orders of magnitude more difficult to learn. I work
for an IT consulting company so I know how easy it is for technical
people to design software that does all kinds of whizzy things...but
that can't be used properly by anyone except experts. "Usability" is a
field that grew enormously with the advent of the World Wide Web,
where you still encounter Web sites with impressive functionality that
are failures because of drop out rates (i.e., users who give up
without accomplishing their goal) of 70% or more because they're not
intuitive or easy to learn.

I'll continue to experiment with CU Mobile, and also FlywithCE
Navigator and XCSoar, two other apps recommended by some who gave up
on CU Mobile. I'm also tracking the ClearNav project, which promises
to combine the ease of use of GNII with more powerful functionality
and an order-of-magnitude better display, albeit at higher cost than a
surplus iPAQ and CU Mobile. This sounds like a winning strategy to me
and I'd definitely be waiting for it were it not for cost reasons.

Keep those comments coming, however. I'm still in sim mode right now.
Unlike Dave Ellis who encouraged us to take off and play with his
early LNAV and then Pocket NAV (forerunner of GNII) to learn their
capabilities, with a lot more sim time I wouldn't dare venture into
the air with CU Mobile, at least not without a backup and a lot of
clearing turns to ensure separation while I fussed with the software.

Chip Bearden

Chip,

I trained one customer on WinPilot who had no PC or PC experience.

I gave him 1 hour one on one training and he began to use the program
in his gilder for simple things like final glide to airports. I did
initially setup his program the maps, database, userway points, nav
boxes, units, safety margin etc.
A couple of weeks later I spend another hour training him to enter
tasks. I get some questions from him now and then at the airport, but
they tend to be simple ones and items that he just forgot where the
item was in the menu.
He did initially go thru the user manual with Ipaq in his hand. Doing
this gets you used to the key strokes to make things happen and most
important gives you an awareness of what is available in the program.
I think both WinPilot & SeeYou have very steep learning curves and if
you persits for 5 or more hours running simulator etc., and going thru
the manual at least once you will find either program to be very
effective.

Again going thru the manual once with ipaq in hand is very
important.


Richard
www.craggyaero.com