unity-design team mailing list archive

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I'm new to this list so please let me know if I'm out of turn
somehow, but I have a few ideas for future incarnations of Unity.

I was reading the Canonical Design blog post at [1], and two
particular problems caught my eye:

-

First, many users seemed to have difficulty finding settings.
Currently these are accessed through the Applications lens or through
the top-right shutdown menu. Neither of these are particularly
intuitive, since users don't consider settings dialogues to be
applications (even though they *technically* are). The solution that
makes the most sense to me is to add a third lens to the default
Applications and Files lenses, a System Settings lens. The icon can be
the default magnifying glass with a stylized gear in the middle.

I'm not sure the best way of implementing it, but it ought to be
fairly simple to have it search only those .desktop files which would
appear in the System->Preferences or System->Admin menus in previous
incarnations. Another question is whether we leave those .desktop
files in the Applications lens or take them out: I'm not sure which
would be best. The obvious keyboard shortcut is Super-S, which
conflicts with the workspace launcher, that would also have to be
dealt with somehow.

Still, details aside this seems like an intuitive and obvious solution
to the problem.

-

The second idea I had was for the bfb and launcher, since there are
several usability problems the study revealed with it:
- mousing over the bfb to reveal the launcher is unintuitive
- clicking the bfb to reveal the dash is unintuitive
- people mistook the nautilus launcher as something more, since it has
a 'home' logo and is the first launcher by default.

I think all of these problems can be solved by a single slightly
different design.

By default, I believe that the bfb should be just another launcher
item with a mono ubuntu logo, fixed at the top like the trash is fixed
at the bottom. The launcher bar should extend all the way to the top
of the screen (where the bfb currently is), cutting the top panel
short at the left side. I've done a rough mockup of what this might
look like at [2].

When the launcher needs to be hidden, the animation should make it
roll or fold up into the bfb, which shrinks and transforms into it's
current state (part of the panel). This should make it obvious that
mousing over the bfb reveals the launcher (via a similar roll-down
animation).

The fact that the bfb is just another launcher item when the launcher
is revealed should make the dash more obviously
clickable/discoverable.

Changing the bfb like this will also help avoid confusion, since the
nautilus launcher will no longer be the top, and 'primary' icon by
default.

I'm fairly confident that this solution solves the mentioned problems,
but it probably has issues of its own. All comments are welcome.

-

Just my two cents,
Evan

[1] http://design.canonical.com/2011/04/unity-benchmark-usability-april-2011/
[2] http://dl.dropbox.com/u/171647/Unity_New_BFB.png