unity-design team mailing list archive

[Evan Huus <eapache@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Ian Santopietro <isantop@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Welcome to the list!
>
> On Apr 22, 2011 4:18 PM, "Evan Huus" <eapache@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> -
>
> I feel like this solution is on the right track, but it should be developed
> better. Adding a new lens at the bottom wouldn't solve all of the problems
> people had with the current system.

Which problems wouldn't it solve? The big one I found from reading the
blog was that people were hesitant to search for settings in the
Applications launcher. I can't imagine them having this problem in a
Settings launcher. I feel like I'm missing something obvious here...

> This is probably one of the areas where
> Unity is significantly different from the competition. Maybe the best thing
> to do would be to simply add System Settings to the launcher. If we kept the
> current system in place, we would keep the supposed benefits of having it
> that way, and adding the launcher would help people discover them.

To be honest, I don't find the System Settings window useful. It lists
almost fifty different subcategories in only a couple of major groups,
and while the search tool is handy, it's not smart: searching for
"wallpaper" or "background" lists no results because the Appearance
dialogue doesn't use those words in its name.

I would much rather have Settings as a lens rather than a simple
launcher to take advantage of Unity's smart searching. Admittedly,
searching the dash for those keywords doesn't return the Appearance
window right now either, but it would be easy to add many more
task-specific launchers to a Settings lens (things like 'wallpaper'
which links to Appearance, or 'battery settings' which links to Power
Management).

Adding all of these right now would clutter the System Settings window
beyond any semblance of usability, but with Unity's smart searching
and a separate Settings lens I think this would be both discoverable
and efficient.

>>
>> 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.
>>
>> -
>
> This is an interesting. I suggested something like this a while back, but
> the Dec said he felt like that much motion was too much. The button idea is
> good, though.

The Dec? Not a term I'm familiar with.

The excess motion point is a good one. There's also the problem that
it would then be counter-intuitive for the launcher to reveal when the
mouse is placed against the edge of the screen, since the launcher
would no longer be 'hiding' there.

What if it slid left like it currently does, but not all the way.
Instead, it collapses to a thin bar at the edge of the screen, which
then slides straight up into the bfb. This hopefully is less motion,
since the vertical folding occurs only to a single uniform strip and
not to many colourful buttons, and it also produce an association with
the left side of the screen. I'm not sure it would look all that good
though.

Alternatively, it doesn't need to change at all. It's possible that
just having the bfb transform more clearly into the panel would make a
strong enough association with the top left corner, without any
further intervention necessary. I'm not as convinced of this option
(it seems obvious to me, but I am Not an average user), but if
usability testing bears it out then it would be quite nice. The rest
of the launcher could then simply hide the way it does now, creating
the same association with the left side of the screen.

Regardless, it's certainly an interesting problem in design.

Just my two cents,
Evan