ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Ruald Andreae <ruald.a@xxxxxxxxx>]

There seems to be an issue with large mails sent to this maillinglist so I
am breaking this into 2 mails. Hopefully it goes through the 3rd time:

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.


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!
>