Re: [Ayatana] Reducing Resistance to Change

[Martín Soto <donsoto@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Martin (and everyone):

Just a few comments on your post:

First of all, I also believe that better communication with the (technical) community would be very valuable. Obviously, Canonical and the UI team have failed so far in selling their work to large fractions of the Ubuntu community and I agree that this can cause serious problems in the long (or maybe not so long) term.

I wonder, however, what sort of approach would work better in this regard. You seem to favor open discussion and justification of design decisions. Interestingly enough, this is precisely what several members of the design team (including Mark Shuttleworth) have been doing these days, by blogging extensively about their design aims. Although I find their expositions very interesting and illustrative, I'm not sure they'll satisfy the large majority of technically-oriented community members.

Problem is, techies and designers tend to have very different mindsets. You normally have designers arguing in terms of subjective criteria: For a particular design, they try to strike a balance between a number of more or less subjective and often competing quality attributes. This makes designs very hard to justify, since it's rather a matter of designers arriving to a point where they feel that, all things considered, their design is right.

Technically-minded people, on the other hand, strive for strict, objective, black-or-white criteria for making technical decisions. They also normally see interaction design as merely a set of technical choices. Combine these two, and you'll probably see where the problem lies: they'll expect every single change to be justified in clear, incontrovertible terms, and this is something they'll never be able to get from a competent interaction designer. This is probably the reason why, for almost every single UI change in Ubuntu, you'll find a number of very vocal people complaining loudly, and reacting with righteous indignation when no satisfactory justification comes out from the designers responsible for the change.

Now, with more than 15 years of Linux experience and a PhD in computer science, I happen to be a very technical user. Still, I'm able to see the value of good design, and personally greatly appreciate Canonical's efforts in this direction. I think, however, that awakening this same sense of appreciation in many of my fellow technical users will be a very difficult endeavor (the _expression_ "herding cats" really comes to mind here...)

I would really appreciate any ideas in this direction, because I don't have many. The few I have are based on my own experience: First, as an advanced user, it is easier for me to adapt to UI changes than it is for less advanced people to deal with the technical complexities of a standard Gnome desktop. Second, a good design is beneficial for me and makes my computing experience a lot more pleasurable in the long term, even if adapting to it is annoying because of my habituation to the idiosyncrasies of previous software versions.

Can we build a compelling argument based on these and similar ideas?

Thanks,

Martín