Chapter 14: User Environment

Chapter 14: User Environment

Overview

The nature of the user environment determines how a user interacts with the system. It is therefore important to how efficiently a user is able to work and the overall perception they gain of the system. Designed well, it should lead to productive and satisfied users. However, it is also an important factor in keeping support costs down.

Windows NT allows a considerable degree of customization of the user environment. It gives the systems administrator the power to control what a user can and cannot do from their workstation. Administrative control extends over settings for:


	?	Icons


	?	Menu structures


	?	Screen layout


	?	User environment operating defaults

To ensure a desire to customize or control doesn?t lack business purpose, the goal of the user interface must always be kept in mind, which is to present an easily useable environment that allows the user to focus on their job. For example, we must trade off the degree to which users are allowed to customize their user interface against supportability, or administrative control of the desktop against flexibility for the user. This chapter is about creating a user environment that allows users to work effectively and the business to function efficiently.

The focus of this chapter is on the issues involved in the optimum design of a user environment. Throughout, it concentrates on the tools and functionality available with standard Windows NT 4 as this allows a ?first principles? approach which...

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