ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Robert Schroll <rschroll@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2015 at 9:34 AM, Rodney Dawes 
<rodney.dawes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> But users may not consider that to be the main focus. If as a user, I 
> do
> not want to use scopes, and am looking for apps, I shouldn't have the
> app hidden from me, because I'm choosing to only view the apps in the
> store. The store interface isn't about what developers want, it's 
> about
> what users want.

Response the first:

We are told, as developers, to "create unique and valuable user 
experiences" [1].  Part of creating a user experience is to design and 
guide the user on a particular path through the application.  Perhaps 
that starts with a scope and flows seamlessly into an app, to display 
richer results.  Perhaps is starts in an app and flows into a scope to 
allow querying of remote resources.  Perhaps it does something more 
complicated.  To do this, developers need to be able to specify the 
(default) entry point to their application.  Forcing them to accept 
entry from any point is antithetical to providing a designed experience.

Response the second:

Why should users need to know about the technological details behind an 
application?  If a "scopey" application uses a simple QML app to 
provide a feature not available in the scope, the user doesn't need to 
know.  Nor should they care if an "appy" application turns operation 
over to a scope for small feature.  The fact that different processes 
are responsible for putting pixels on the screen should not stop the 
user from thinking of the first as a scope and the second as an app.

In short, if a developer decides that their app+scope is a scope, we 
should believe them.  In fact, I would argue that there should be a way 
for the developer to keep the app icon from showing up in the app grid, 
so that the only entry point is through the scope.

As a for-instance: My Gmail scope offers a pretty awful reply 
functionality [2], limited by the capabilities of scopes.  I'm toying 
around with a little QML app that would allow more full-featured 
replies.  But I wouldn't want this combined package to be listed as an 
app, since the QML part is designed only to be entered from the scope.

Robert

[1] http://design.ubuntu.com/apps/getting-started/design-vision
[2] Er, that's awful functionality for replies, not functionality for 
awful replies.  The latter is coming in v2.