unity-design team mailing list archive

["Scott E. Armitage" <launchpad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 9:04 AM, Barry Warsaw <barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Put me in the camp of liking the new button location.  In fact the whole
> Ambiance theme is the first default Ubuntu desktop theme I haven't felt
> compelled to customize (well, except for the Terminal background!).  It
> looks
> stunning and very pleasant to use for long periods of time.  Kudos.
>

Forgive my bluntness, but this should not be a decision based on whether or
not certain people like the placement. As Mark pointed out earlier, this is
not a democracy, so if /anyone's/ preference was to have any weight, it
would be his alone.

What /should/ matter, however, is usability. This is a fairly big change,
and regardless of whether or not I like the placement, I would really like
to see some real usability test data. I'm not entirely convinced that having
the buttons next to the menus is a bad thing, but nor am I convinced that it
is actually a good thing. I think that if we are going to force the majority
of our user-base (most of whom won't be comfortable changing it back on
their own) to use this new left-handed placement, we should have a document
explaining to them why this is a better decision and why they should learn
to like it. Without proper usability data, such a document is impossible to
write.

So I will repeat the request: can we please see the usability test data for
the window manager button placement? If there isn't any, could we please
have someone experienced in the field begin testing to collect this data? I
would be happy to participate and try out the new placement, but I am not
experienced enough to actually run the tests.

Regards,
-Scott


-- 
Scott Armitage, B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc. candidate
Space Flight Laboratory
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies
4925 Dufferin Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5T6