ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Ruald Andreae <ruald.a@xxxxxxxxx>]

Awesome thanks for the advice everyone!

So I want to start from the moment you turn on the phone and walk through a
simple daily use case. We can then discuss how to best continue with each
issue.

1.
Left swipe in launcher:
1 in 3 times my finger hits the ridge of my nexus 4 case, a ringke fusion,
and the launcher does not open. I might be able to learn off this habit,
but I seem to be doing it frequently enough. We need to be careful when the
bezel around the screens gets really thin and cases obscure those first few
pixels and users end up repeating the gesture to get it right.

2. Launch phone from launcher:
What does the orange bar at the bottom signify? It correlates to the tab
you are on but they are at opposite ends of the screen so it's a bit
awkward. Also what clues does the user have that there are more tabs? The >
next to Call is not visually different enough to make me think there are
more. Should be an orange > (or whatever your theme colour is) .

3.
Add a contact:
The context menu from the bottom is something users are just going to have
to get used to. I have to constantly remind myself there is something there
to swipe up. Probably why I missed the back button in the browser.

Should there be some minor indicator at the bottom to show the user there
is something? Some kind of grab handle? This grab handle can be used in
more places like the keyboard and the panel screen in terminal but I will
get to that.

So I open the context menu and click add, add name and number and click
save. Back to list open menu to add new contact, no add contact button
appears? Blank white bar. I can open it a couple of times. This is where
the grab handle comes in again on a 1 pixel wide area you can grab. This
reminds me of how irritated I get trying to click the one pixel wide window
drag in nautilus to expand the menu on the left. Knowing the best spot to
grab the menu reduces mistakes, repeat gestures and annoyance with an
interface that must just work.

5.
Open address book from home screen:
Why is the address book and the phone contacts 2 different apps? Phone has
search but address book doesn't? Is it not possible to just meld them in
one?
I'm able to add a contact here but instantly lost as to where I must add
what where. No indication where to add the name. the photo location is
clear, although I think the "person icon" should be smaller to be more
clear that it's a photo location. There are also labels for the contact
details, just not name.
Still is 2 apps for contacts necessary?

I find the name box on the dark background and enter a name. Keyboard won't
let me switch between caps and small, shift button does nothing. I
accidentally change rotation of the screen, the keyboard rotates but not
the contact field and the caps changes to small, hit shift again, nothing,
rotate screen, switches over. At least there is a workaround but that also
doesn't always work.

I type the name in and now become stuck. Photo is unselectable, click
nothing happens, cannot slide the keyboard away, enter does nothing, done
creates the contact without me adding the numbers or other details, back
takes me back to the list of contacts without creating anything.

So there is actually no way to create a contact AND add contact details in
one process.

Opening the contact, menu edit, allows me to add the number but the
keyboard obscures the contact details so you don't see yourself typing the
number.

The Phone contacts tab is a way better interface, everything that is broken
in the address book is fixed in the phone contacts. We should remove the
address book app completely and add a contacts shortcut directly to the
phone contacts app.

4.
Kill phone app due to menu malfunction:
OK so since I had a broken menu in the phone contacts I had to kill it.
Back to the home screen press long hold the running apps, the cross icon
appears, but I only want to kill one app. The only way to get rid of the
app kill system is to press and long hold again on another app which seems
counterintuitive as I don't want to close that app . Can't that just be
tapping anywhere else but the crosses? It even carries through when
switching to other apps. I seem to go away and come back and accidentally
kill more apps cos it's still active.

5.
Manage/delete multiple contacts:
Simple, press and long hold one item to activate "select multiple items" in
any list anywhere in the OS. This must be a standard feature. context
sensitive menu items can add more functionality once items are selected.
Like delete, move, group, star, share, etc etc.

6.
Send message to contact:
Only place to do this is from phone. Like contacts, there should be a app
shortcut for conversations. Not sure what is planned for the messages
indicator menu shade and whether new messages will be able to be sent from
there. That is a feature I would like to see. When you slide down messages,
the first icon is a new message, a popup comes up and you choose which
medium the message is for, SMS, WhatsApp, G+ hangout, twitter etc etc. same
as the share menu should look like. select SMS and send your new message
right there in the menu, replies gets tracked in the same menu and
responded there too. Whatever medium you are using must use the messaging
menu to interface with. Features like sharing content in the message as
well.

Typing the message is a pleasure. The keyboard seems responsive and I seem
to make less mistakes than on stock android. I would like to see options to
add numbers to the keys as a press and long hold function. As well as some
more punctuation under the / and . keys. Shift key also doesn't change
significantly enough to let me know it's in shift, caps lock or off mode.

Are there plans to support other input methods? Something like stock
android is very good, switfkey and swype in one, also "Minuum" has got me
curious, have you guys seen that project?

At this time I don't yet have a sim card in the phone so I guess I can't
click send due to that?

7.
Checking the resource utilisation because of battery drain:
Open terminal from home screen, I apt-get install htop, man I love that!
It's still Ubuntu!

2 phablet processes is taking up 40-50% of 2 cores, that seems excessive?
That could be causing the battery drain and heat.

Using 500mb ram only, nice.

Rotating the terminal app is a painful process to watch. The animation is
playing at a dismal frame rate and takes about 1 - 2 seconds.

Tapping screen brings up KB. Carefully grab and slide the 1 pixel line of
the keyboard edge down to remove so I can slide in the menu. Why can't I
slide in the menu without removing the kB? Click the panels icon, sometimes
does not register, or when the popup is open it doesn't register to close
if I click panels again, or sometimes it closes the whole menu completely.

Adding an extra always visible, visually different, grab handle will help a
lot here with swiping in and out menus and kbs.

So I open  control keys panel. Grey text on orange? Please make it black
text or don't use orange buttons. All the buttons look ugly, simple grey on
white background is elegant and is in line with the rest of the OS.

Hiding the control keys is easy enough, as long as the panels button
responds or the menu doesn't just close.

8.
Final issue for today. With a few apps open the running apps tend to loose
their icons and end up being just black boxes. Seems to take a while to
display them. That should not do that at all. As soon as you go to running
apps they must all display happily.

Cheers all.


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 4:31 PM, Psypher <psypher246@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hello All,
>
> I loaded the latest Touch image onto my Nexus 4 to start testing out and
> dogfooding the OS. I feel that my insight as a heavy Ubuntu user for 9
> years would be helpful to this mailing list and would really like to help
> create and shape the OS into something unique.
>
> I am wondering where to start logging bugs and issues I have found so far.
> The challenging part is to know which parts of the interface are still in
> production and which parts do not exist yet at all.
> A small example of issues so far:
> No navigation buttons in the browser, how do you go back to the previous
> page?
> Battery drain and increased temperature (process leak?)
> Wifi switches stopped working completely
> keyboard disappears in terminal when you choose a panel and no way to get
> the kb back
>
> These are just a few of many.
>
> So where should I begin? Should I take just one issue (battery drain and
> heat) and just run with that or log a bug for each and every issue I have
> found so far even if that part of the interface is non-functional at this
> time?
>
> Do we have a matrix of features that exist and what their working states
> are as well as future features?
>
> Also what distinguishes "Core Apps" from core functionality and where is
> the latter being tracked? Logging bugs on the terminal application is less
> important to me than logging bugs about the interface/OS itself.
>
> Any guidance as to where my insight could be used would be greatly
> appreciated. I am not a developer myself but I am learning a bit of python.
> But I have great usability ideas and have found quite a few glaring
> omissions in the interface but not sure if this is the right place for
> those discussions. I feel we have a very long way to go before this OS and
> it's core apps are usable and would like to assist in making that target.
>
> Great work so far everyone, it does look stunning, clean and crisp!
>