unity-design team mailing list archive

[Natan Yellin <aantny@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 9:50 PM, Richard JOHNSON <nixternal@xxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hey everyone,
>
> So, a few things that I am noticing on this list, in press, and from
> various users, concerning the desktop notifications are this:
>
> a) When we, the developers, are discussing the options with notifications,
> we tend to discuss our workflow, which is fine, but we also need to
> remember that we are working on this together not just for ourselves, but
> for a much larger audience.
>
> b) Obviously a lot of us like certain aspects and dislike certain aspects
> of the entire notification system. A lot of us our tossing what we think
> would be good and what isn't good. Because of this, it has become obvious
> to me that having some sort of advanced feature set where people like us
> can configure the notifications to the way we like or darn close.
>
> c) I had the opportunity to discuss the notification stuff with users, not
> developers, and the consensus was that a majority of them either paid no
> attention or they really liked the convenience of it. So far some of the
> complaints that I have come across seem to be that of people with advanced
> knowledge of Linux/Ubuntu, and typically these same types of people have
> the knowledge to make stuff work the way they want it (this is why I think
> some sort of advanced configuration subset would be good).
>
> d) We need to remember that Ubuntu is marketed to a much larger group than
> developers. "Ubuntu aims to be usable by as many people as possible..."
> There are far more users than there are developers, and even though a lot
> of us got into free software to "scratch our own itch" and some are still
> into free software because of this, we have to remember the rest of the
> people who are using our creation. If it were up to me everyone would just
> have a pretty shell because that is my itch, but how far would I get if I
> just kept scratching mine? This one really should have been merged into (a)
> above, sorry.

Even if most Ubuntu users aren't at all tech savvy, you can't annoy the
small minority which are power users. Those are the people who may decide to
get involved in development and submit patches, so their opinion is critical
to your success.

How about, for starters, adding a gconf option to show an X icon on
notifications. I personally think it makes sense not to have one, but if
people want one then you should let them have it. (And normal users, who
you're trying to train to use notifications in a specific way, will never
turn on the X because they don't even know what gconf is.)

Either way, thanks a lot for all of the work that you guys have done so far!
It's great to see Canonical getting involved and trying to improve the user
interface.

Natan