unity-design team mailing list archive

[James Jenner <james.g.jenner@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 9 June 2011 18:22, Adrian Maier <syraxes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I fully agree with GonzO .
>
> Basically,  Unity attempts to introduce eye candy at the expense of
> cutting down useful features .
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 01:13, James Jenner <james.g.jenner@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> >
> > There is a valid usability based reason to remove data that the average
> user
> > has no use of IMHO. I have no problem with that approach and from a
> purely
> > usability point of view it makes sense to me. It's like companies that
> used
> > to have their thumb in so many pies as a part of their business. If your
> a
> > manufacturer you may have warehouses, trucks to ship goods, etc, etc. A
> lot
> > of businesses found that it's easier to focus on the core business if
> > they're not distracted by all this other stuff that really has nothing to
> do
> > with what they excel in, namely manufacturing widget X. So they
> outsourced
> > their warehouses, distribution lines, Help Desks, service centres, etc.
> What
> > I'm trying to draw an analogy with is that generally the average user is
> > focused on one task at a time. They wish to surf the net, which involves
> > clicking on links, maybe typing in a url (though I find a lot of users
> who
> > use google to find the site they wish to go for). Some will use
> bookmarks.
> > But generally they don't care about what other applications are running,
> > they don't care about the status of their printer, the current time, how
> > much disk space they have left, if blue tooth is enabled, what programs
> they
> > can launch, what the weather is in the local city, etc. All they care
> about
> > is reading lolcats or chatting to friends on facebook, etc. This is
> purely
> > from my own observations.
>
> <sarcasm mode on>
> Following this kind of logic ,  ubuntu should install exactly 3
> applications : a browser, an instant messenger and a media player.
> Any user who needs more than that is a "power user" therefore it
> makes no sense to clutter the default Ubuntu installation with some
> specific needs ....
> And, you know what ?  it makes no sense to waste resources with managing
> the Ubuntu repositories! The "power" users are supposed to be skilled
> enough
> to compile from sources any application they need.
> Afterall, not everyone uses Gimp or LibreOffice.
>
> Also, DVD burning software is a total waste of space that would only
> confuse
> the "average user"  :
> - tablets don't have dvd writers .
> - the average user only browses the internet and socializes online
> So ... who needs to burn DVDs after all ?   The future is cloud storage ,
> so
> everything else should be deprecated !
>
> <sarcasm mode off>
>
>
I do realise that your being sarcastic, however your sarcasm is purely a
vehicle to disregard my points without answering them in an intelligent
fashion. Different users have different needs. As such the first question
should be not what you need but who Ubuntu is targeted at and where does
Canonical wish to go with Ubuntu. Who is this average user, what market are
they targeting, etc etc.

I tried looking at the Ubuntu and Canonical website breifly but didn't find
any specific answer. However, based on memory of past articles and blogs
read, I get the impression that the target of Ubuntu is not business use but
home use. Even if it is for business use, the majority of users in my
experience do not care about multiple running applications, the performance
of the system or the time continually. If and when they do care about such
information it is a rare occurrence in their daily routine.

Usability is about making the interface easy to work overall, not for
specific instances.


>
> > In essence I'm trying to say that IMO the job of the OS should be to
> allow
> > the user to do what they want, it shouldn't get in the way and clutter
> their
> > screens.
>
> I deffinitely agree that "the OS should be to allow the user to do
> what they want" .
> In my case , I want to be able to configure it so that I can see all the .
>
> The current incarnation of Unity tries to enforce a simplified environment
> where the ui designer decides what is useful/appropriate for the user to
> see
> on screen.  It has zero configurability compared to gnome2 or xfce4 or kde.
>
> There would be no complicated debate about "global menus auto-hiding"  if
> the users were able to configure that !
>
>
>
Want and need are two seperate things. Want can be subjective, can be based
on perception and can be based on emotion, often based on past experience.
Just because someone wants something doesn't mean that they should have it.
When talking about UI's a want for a certain function isn't always the best
thing for the OS as a whole or for the individual in the task they're trying
to perform.



>
> > If they want to watch youtube, look at facebook, check their gmail
> > account, etc, then the whole focus of the UI should be on what they're
> > trying to achieve. And when they wish to do something else, then let them
> > see the extra options they need for that activity. But when 80 or 90
> percent
> > of the time is spent looking at the contents in a window, there is no
> point
> > cluttering up the landscape with irrelevant information.
> >
> > Of course there are power users, or business users who need to switch
> > between applications, etc.
>
> Wow + omg + lol :    "business users who need to switch between
> applications" .
> Switching applications is something that everyone does, not just
> "power" users ...
>
> There are indeed some users who spend 100% of their time in a browser.
> But it doesn't mean that the users who don't do that are some kind of
> "faulty
> users"  who have to be converted to a limiting working environment .
>
>
Firstly I never called users who switch between applications faulty, I
stated that IMHO the majority of users do not switch on a regular basis.
Don't put words in my mouth in trying to discredit what I have written
please.

Not every one switches between applications every single minute, or every
five minutes or even every 30 minutes. Take all of what I said, not
extracts. If you wish to justify showing 100% of the time each instance of
what is running and enable easy mouse clicks then you need to justify how
the majority of users need this. The majority of users is not you, nor are
they me. I doubt if they would follow your work flow or mine for that
matter. The question is not what you do or what I do, the question is what
do the majority do, and if there is more than one group of majority then
identify and justify. I'm trying to avoid appealing to a higher authority or
try and cite my own personal experience because I know how quickly this
would be dismissed. So I will just say that IMHO the majority of people who
use computers both for work and for pleasure tend to spend most of their
time on their computer within one application. Whether this be an ERP,
Financial, Word Processor or Web browser based application, in my experience
this is how life is. In my experience of the average business user and home
user, it is unusual for people to change applications continually (I'm
talking any more often than once every 5 minutes, though would be willing to
increase, right now I'm being very subjective and would be interested in
figures, though uncertain where to obtain some from).

I would be really interested to know what is considered the average user or
what the targeted users are and how often they switch apps, or need to check
the time or need to check performance based on a percentage of their total
weekly usage. Then we could determine exactly what is needed.


>
> > But I think the push to show information about
> > the system, current running applications and launchers for new
> applications
> > only caters for a small percentage of the time spent by a user on a
> > computer.
>
> > I would suggest that people are serious about improving Unity then we
> need
> > to be developing proper use cases to document the different work methods
> > people utilise. This would go hand in hand with identifying the type of
> > users, what percentage of the marketplace they make up, which direction
> is
> > Ubuntu going and what users they wish to target. To me it seems that a
> lot
> > of the arguments are subjective, some based on an emotional reaction.
> Some
> > proper use case documentation, analysis of the user base, determining
> what
> > use cases are used and how frequently they're used based on time spent in
> > front of the UI would help provide some objective information on this
> whole
> > UI issue.
> >
> > Btw, I'm not ranting, I'm just trying to look at this objectively and
> assess
> > if the complaints made are valid. If the figures come back that people
> need
> > to know what application is running 80% of the time they use a computer
> then
> > I would be the first to say lets make it permanently visible.
>
> Perhaps the Unity developers+designers should organize some polls so
> that users can vote and express their preferences.  The current design
> direction
> is towards tablets and users who do nothing but browsing.
>
>
This is prone to failure. IMO the majority of people who would respond to
such a poll may not be the group of users that Ubuntu/Canonical wish to
target. I suspect that the results would be misleading.


>
> The inability to see the running applications is something that I
> deeply I dislike in Unity.
> There are two distinct use cases :
> - starting an application  ( from a menu  or quick launcher or desktop icon
> )
> - look at what's running and switch to a particular application
>
> From my point of view the removal of a "Windows list" is a horrible
> idea that distupts
> my workflow:
> - i frequently open applications that are not in the quicklaunch / launcher
> - i frequently switch applications by clicking on them in the "window list"
> - i frequently have multiple Temrinals open , and i use the "window
> list" to switch them
> - in a quicklauncher I want that the icons stay the same all the time
> : those are my
>   frequent apps  and i don't want that they  get mixed with some
> extra apps that
>   happen to be running at a moment
> - when looking at the open applications i want to see exactly what's
> running ,
>  without being forced to analyze the status of each icon in order to see
> which
>
> - I really don't want that my linux desktop mimics macOS or windows. I
> don't have a Mac.  And in win7 the first thing i did was to re-enable
> the quicklaunch and the classic theme.
>
>
Two issues I see here. Firstly your term frequently is subjective. You say
you often open applications that are not in the quick launcher. How often is
this? Have you kept a log over a period of a week or longer to determine how
often you need to open an application that is not in the quick launcher? I'm
presuming that your quick launcher is full and you cannot add any more items
to it. I presume that you have googled and know how to rearrange your
launchers on the quick launcher and how to make something stick to it, you
haven't seen the various posts on how to disable the highlight for all icons
so it only shows running applications, also I presume your not aware of the
indicators or what they mean (number of running windows, currently selected
window). I may not be aware of some issues with ordering of icons, but I've
had no major problems with it personally. I do agree that the indicators for
running apps is not obvious, I suspect that they will tidy this up over
time.

Now I realise that asking you to keep a log could be seen as an a easy way
out for me to disregard/discredit what you have said. I'm not trying to do
that, I'm trying to quantify claims people make like 'always'. My personal
experience has been that what people perceive is not often reality and the
only way to get to the core issues is to measure what really happens. Only
by being able to prove facts can people get things like this changed when
Canonical appear to be steadfast in this direction. Just remember that it's
not enough to prove one person's experience, but to justify their experience
as being important based on where Canonical wish to go with the OS.


>
> Unity has some time until Ubuntu 11.11 to implement decent configurability.
>
>
Which I'm sure they will (and I'm sure your aware). If they don't then there
are other distributions that you can migrate to that serves your
requirements, if you feel that the path that Ubuntu is headed is not in your
best interest.

I do think that people tend to forget that everything isn't about
themselves, it's about the direction of the OS, what area it is targeting,
etc. Understanding that enables better critiquing of changes they make. If
anyone knows of a roadmap or any white papers, etc regarding where Canonical
are heading, then please let me know. I would be very interested.

Cheers,

James.