unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jim Campbell <jwcampbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi All,

On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 3:00 PM, Jeremy Bicha <jeremy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On 14 May 2011 15:27, Niklas Rosenqvist <niklas.s.rosenqvist@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > The two problems I'm trying to solve is that new users don't know what to
> do
> > next after a fresh install and the second one is the possibility to
> further
> > extend the Ubuntu desktop environment (maybe with Unity 2D). Now when a
> user
> > who just migrated from Windows (a very likely situation) he has no idea
> of
> > how Ubuntu is used. Windows users are used to find an executable to
> download
> > on the web and then install it by an installation wizard and in Ubuntu
> you
> > simply search the Ubuntu Software Center. It's not okay to expect a user
> to
> > read on the web just to learn how he/she should install a program since
> > these things aren't apparent from the view that greets a user on a newly
> > installed system.
> > This will be solved with a "Welcome"-screen that can contain what would
> ease
> > the learning curve of a new operating system. The Ubuntu Tour would be a
> > great option to have here and since there are plenty of reasons why the
> > ubuntu-restriced-extras package shouldn't be encouraged to install there
> > must at least be something that explains to the user how he should enable
> > flash since this is today almost a necessity for surfing the web for
> many.
> > What we want is an easy transition for newly migrated users and the
> welcome
> > screen can provide just that.
>
> How about just opening Help the first time the user logs in? Then all
> we'd have to do is make sure the front page of Help is actually
> helpful. I think the Help does a pretty decent job but we're looking
> to improve it for 11.10. I'm not very convinced that we need to make
> room on the front page for a link to install Flash (it is in the guide
> though). We do have a section about how to add or remove software.
>
> We can add more pictures to the guide. Since the guide is shipped on
> the CD, we can't go overboard with images but we can definitely add
> more if they make the content easier to understand and more useful.
>
> Jeremy Bicha
>
>
I had never heard of the Ubuntu Tour project before, but it seems like they
already have a fair number of contributors. I know that the Ubuntu docs team
hadn't been known for creating good user help in the past, but the on-disk
help shipped with 11.04 is a decent start (search for 'help' in the Dash,
and then explore the help contents . . .), we are working toward a better
online presence, and we're working with upstream Gnome and KDE to
significantly improve our help browsers.

To anyone interested in the Ubuntu Tour project, or in creating a program
that launches on startup to give you some kind of a tour, though, please
join the Ubuntu docs team instead. We are moving in a good direction.

Here are some of the areas where we will work in the coming cycles:
- Ensuring documentation coverage in all of the apps that are shipped by
default in Ubuntu. This means making contributions directly with the
upstream projects (where appropriate) and working with Ubuntu teams for
Ubuntu-specific apps (e.g., Software Center and Ubuntu One).
- Establishing a11y test cases so that we can know where a11y works in our
help, where it doesn't, and what we need to do to fix it.
- Creating a great web presence for help.ubuntu.com
- Conditional help based on calls to dbus. This means that if you're running
Unity, you'll see Unity help. Running Gnome shell? You'll see gnome-shell
help.
- Making informed choices based on a team strategy document (a WIP) and UX
best practices.

I'm not going to list everything out here, and we welcome suggestions (we
need to port our Switching from Windows content to the current release) but
the docs team is going to do good stuff. You should join us.

Jim