unity-design team mailing list archive

[Kevin Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hey, Shane.

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 2:40 PM, Shane Fagan
<shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I get what you mean but some of the problems you are saying are more
> about implementation than about the concept. Maybe my idea could be
> done as a leftmost or rightmost option on the menu bar that says
> frequent (and maybe recent) so the other menus dont move around per
> say but the most common stuff floats to the top.
>
> The second thing id like to note is the changing daily bit, that is a
> coding issue not a concept issue. The logic in the code probably could
> have been improved to remove that.

The menu items were rearranged so that the commonly used items were at
the top of the menu and the remainder of the items were hidden behind
a button.  See <http://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.831/archive/2008/lectures/L27-experiment-design-analysis/image002.png>
for an illustration.  The menu on the left shows the frequently used
items.  The menu on the right shows the full menu (after the arrow
button had been clicked or after a delay of some time).

Around that time, I was doing a lot of tech support and had to field
numerous calls from people who couldn't find the menu item they were
looking for.  It was also problematic when a person went to use a
colleagues computer because their colleagues menu items would be
different, too.

So the general problems with the adaptive menus were the lack of
consistency and, in this particular implementation, the reduced
discoverability.

> And lastly that last paragraph I don't really agree with. This list is
> about concepts to improve the usability and design of the Ubuntu
> project as a whole. Just because you don't think its a problem and its
> fine the way it is doesn't mean you shouldn't think about it and try
> to improve upon it.

Whether you've provided a problem statement or not, your suggested
improvement implies that you think there is a problem with the current
menus.  If you don't know what the goals of the design are, how do you
evaluate the design or know if you've achieved those goals?

I'm not shooting down your idea.  My initial email was just to point
out that an attempt had been made previously and failed.  That serves
to point out some pitfalls that you'll want to avoid in your design.
Hopefully, it'll save you some time and effort.

I'm also not suggesting that existing menus are perfect—there are, in
fact, a number of problems with them.  I'm asking you which problem
you're trying to tackle.  Once we've settled on the problem, we can
start looking at potential solutions.

--Kevin