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For me it would be more intuitive, less cluttered, et al, if the
dock had a "system" lens, a "favorite applications" lens, and a
"current open windows" lens (adjacent to, or combined with, the
workspaces lens) ...and then dispensed with the paradigm of instead
placing individual launchers for n applications on the dock.
For applications I interact with less frequently, I would then go to
the applications lens, and for what I use most often I would go to
the favorite apps lens (much like I do with the Mint Menu applet
right now -- the Linux Mint devs have a much simpler and more usable
concept here IMHO). Take the above on its own merits. Now that you've taken the above on its own merits, consider the following ... This would also make room for migrating "system tray" sort of stuff to the instead and getting rid of the top panel entirely, and putting window controls, window titles, and menu bars back into the application windows where they are far more intuitive and usable at any state of window resizing / positioning. On 04/22/2011 08:04 PM, Evan Huus wrote: On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Welcome to the list! On Apr 22, 2011 4:18 PM, "Evan Huus" <eapache@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:Hi, I'm new to this list so please let me know if I'm out of turn somehow, but I have a few ideas for future incarnations of Unity. I was reading the Canonical Design blog post at [1], and two particular problems caught my eye: - First, many users seemed to have difficulty finding settings. Currently these are accessed through the Applications lens or through the top-right shutdown menu. Neither of these are particularly intuitive, since users don't consider settings dialogues to be applications (even though they *technically* are). The solution that makes the most sense to me is to add a third lens to the default Applications and Files lenses, a System Settings lens. The icon can be the default magnifying glass with a stylized gear in the middle. I'm not sure the best way of implementing it, but it ought to be fairly simple to have it search only those .desktop files which would appear in the System->Preferences or System->Admin menus in previous incarnations. Another question is whether we leave those .desktop files in the Applications lens or take them out: I'm not sure which would be best. The obvious keyboard shortcut is Super-S, which conflicts with the workspace launcher, that would also have to be dealt with somehow. Still, details aside this seems like an intuitive and obvious solution to the problem. -I feel like this solution is on the right track, but it should be developed better. Adding a new lens at the bottom wouldn't solve all of the problems people had with the current system.Which problems wouldn't it solve? The big one I found from reading the blog was that people were hesitant to search for settings in the Applications launcher. I can't imagine them having this problem in a Settings launcher. I feel like I'm missing something obvious here...This is probably one of the areas where Unity is significantly different from the competition. Maybe the best thing to do would be to simply add System Settings to the launcher. If we kept the current system in place, we would keep the supposed benefits of having it that way, and adding the launcher would help people discover them.To be honest, I don't find the System Settings window useful. It lists almost fifty different subcategories in only a couple of major groups, and while the search tool is handy, it's not smart: searching for "wallpaper" or "background" lists no results because the Appearance dialogue doesn't use those words in its name. I would much rather have Settings as a lens rather than a simple launcher to take advantage of Unity's smart searching. Admittedly, searching the dash for those keywords doesn't return the Appearance window right now either, but it would be easy to add many more task-specific launchers to a Settings lens (things like 'wallpaper' which links to Appearance, or 'battery settings' which links to Power Management). Adding all of these right now would clutter the System Settings window beyond any semblance of usability, but with Unity's smart searching and a separate Settings lens I think this would be both discoverable and efficient.The second idea I had was for the bfb and launcher, since there are several usability problems the study revealed with it: - mousing over the bfb to reveal the launcher is unintuitive - clicking the bfb to reveal the dash is unintuitive - people mistook the nautilus launcher as something more, since it has a 'home' logo and is the first launcher by default. I think all of these problems can be solved by a single slightly different design. By default, I believe that the bfb should be just another launcher item with a mono ubuntu logo, fixed at the top like the trash is fixed at the bottom. The launcher bar should extend all the way to the top of the screen (where the bfb currently is), cutting the top panel short at the left side. I've done a rough mockup of what this might look like at [2]. When the launcher needs to be hidden, the animation should make it roll or fold up into the bfb, which shrinks and transforms into it's current state (part of the panel). This should make it obvious that mousing over the bfb reveals the launcher (via a similar roll-down animation). The fact that the bfb is just another launcher item when the launcher is revealed should make the dash more obviously clickable/discoverable. Changing the bfb like this will also help avoid confusion, since the nautilus launcher will no longer be the top, and 'primary' icon by default. I'm fairly confident that this solution solves the mentioned problems, but it probably has issues of its own. All comments are welcome. -This is an interesting. I suggested something like this a while back, but the Dec said he felt like that much motion was too much. The button idea is good, though.The Dec? Not a term I'm familiar with. The excess motion point is a good one. There's also the problem that it would then be counter-intuitive for the launcher to reveal when the mouse is placed against the edge of the screen, since the launcher would no longer be 'hiding' there. What if it slid left like it currently does, but not all the way. Instead, it collapses to a thin bar at the edge of the screen, which then slides straight up into the bfb. This hopefully is less motion, since the vertical folding occurs only to a single uniform strip and not to many colourful buttons, and it also produce an association with the left side of the screen. I'm not sure it would look all that good though. Alternatively, it doesn't need to change at all. It's possible that just having the bfb transform more clearly into the panel would make a strong enough association with the top left corner, without any further intervention necessary. I'm not as convinced of this option (it seems obvious to me, but I am Not an average user), but if usability testing bears it out then it would be quite nice. The rest of the launcher could then simply hide the way it does now, creating the same association with the left side of the screen. Regardless, it's certainly an interesting problem in design. Just my two cents, Evan _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ayatana Post to : ayatana@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ayatana More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp |