unity-design team mailing list archive

[Diego Moya <turingt@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 28 April 2010 12:47, Tyler Brainerd wrote:
>> either way, the discussion here is suggesting something which has
> conflicting goals. Is it an app search or a file search? Is it currently
> installed apps or installable apps? Its going to create a really mess. Lets
> narrow the vision a bit, and then I think it will work.

Does it matter? Google has trained users to type words into search
boxes and retrieve relevant information, no matter of what kind. If I
want to look for "photos" or "midi music" or "pay taxes" all those
results (files, installed aplications, applications in the
repositories) would help.

The goal for this system-level search box can be "show me everything
my Gnome/Ubuntu machine has to offer with respect to these keywords".
If you think of user goals instead of system features, this is what
makes more sense, and restricting the search to just one type of
element doesn't help. The only limitation in scope I would include is
limiting search to local information, don't go to the Ubuntu webpage
to gather results. But then I'm not even sure of that one.



> In this note, we see in Windows a very clear application: The start menu is
> meant as a hub of applications, so pressing it and typing searches
> applications, not documents. Document names are often repetitive (I often
> name documents simply numbers, and identify them based on location in a
> folder) but application names make sense to search.

If aiming for simplicity, I see how restricting search to just
applications can help. But when the user searches to retrieve
applications is because s/he don't know which application is the best
one to use for a given task, in which case it's highly valuable to
show all valid applications for that task, not just those installed.