unity-design team mailing list archive

[Chris Coulson <chrisccoulson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 14:27 -0300, Martin Albisetti wrote:
> Hello ayataners,
> 
> A comment from someone during the weekend sparked a few questions for me on how 
> we've implemented the shutdown dialog (attached), and I wanted to get some more 
> brains on it, as it may be something relatively simple to fix.
> 
> Someone I know uses Ubuntu just about the same as they used to use Windows, 
> they don't know much about the OS (and don't care). I was spying him from 
> behind, and saw that he hit the shutdown option, and basically looked at the 
> screen for 30 seconds while the countdown finished and shut down the computer 
> automatically on his laptop. When I asked why, he firmly responded "because the 
> computer shuts down properly that way".
> 
> Since then, I've asked a few people about it, and while guesses vary, I've had 
> 2 more people give me a similar answer.
> I wonder if we couldn't re-design that dialog so it's clear that in reality you 
> should be clicking the button immediately.
> My understanding is that the countdown is there to:
> - Prevent mistakes and allow you to bail out
> - In case you hit shutdown and left without reading, it would shutdown 
> automatically eventually
> 
> I'm tempted to jump into a wireframe, but I'm interested in getting some more 
> eyes and brains on the problem before.
> 
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> 
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Hi Martin,

Thank you for discovering this. I had suspected for some time that some
users might be doing this (waiting for the countdown to expire), but
wasn't entirely sure if it were true or not. The reason I had suspected
that users were doing this is because we have had people requesting that
we make the countdown configurable via GConf (because they think 60
seconds is too long and don't think that 60 seconds should be "forced"
upon users). My reply to these requests is something along the lines of
"How would this save you time? You don't need to sit there and wait for
60 seconds". The only plausible reason for users to request the timeout
to be shorter is that they misunderstand the purpose of it, and sit
there for 60 seconds until the machine shuts down. In fact, one user
requested that the timeout be as short as 10 seconds, which would
completely reduce it's effectiveness as a confirmation dialog, and I'm
sure the user wouldn't have requested that if they understood what the
dialog existed for in the first place.

You are right about the reasons for the dialog and associated timeout.
It is there as a confirmation to prevent mistakes (shutting down
accidentally can lose you work, although well behaved session clients
should prevent a non-interactive shutdown anyway if you have unsaved
work), and to ensure your machine eventually switches off if you
requested to shutdown but didn't notice the dialog. But, as you have
discovered - some users don't understand what the dialog exists for, and
this is consistent with my own suspicions too.

Regards
Chris

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