unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote on 27/07/11 16:05:
>...
> On 27 July 2011 13:39, Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>> We have no evidence that a non-trivial proportion of people notice
>> differently colored icons in the menu bar.
> 
> You might say that's an assumption, based on personal experience and
> observation. Sure, it's not a scientific test, and I only have tested
> it on 10-20 people. But I noticed it the first time it changed color
> and I was surprised by how effective that really is.

Yes, there seems to be a huge variation in the degree to which people
notice small things on the screen. The sort of people who contribute to
Ubuntu, for example, often find a colored icon in a panel quite enough
to notify them of software updates. They can't understand how anyone
would possibly not see it. But in user tests, nobody does.

>> I don't see how they'd be more likely to search for them in the menu
>> bar.
> 
> * the indicators are visible. The launcher is not.
> * bluetooth is displayed as an indicator, not as a launcher.

Fair points.

> * you often have many usb devices connected.
> * devices need a description. Menus as suitable for that. Launchers
>   aren't.

Those two don't seem to be related to the question of whether people
will look to disconnect/eject a device in the first place.

>> Personally, I would find more inviting a launcher that I could put
>> anything into -- applications, bookmarks, documents, folders,
>> contacts, whatever. I can do that with the Mac OS X Dock and (mostly)
>> with the Windows 7 taskbar.
> 
> Interesting. Wouldn't that make the launcher notifications (usb, etc)
> even more difficult to find?

I don't know what you mean by launcher notifications.

>                              I thought I would want to keep all of my
> most used applications on the launcher and that I would temporarily
> move icons up and down according to what I'm doing so that I could
> rearrange keyboard shortcuts. Turns out I do, but in a much smaller
> degree than I had expected. The first six launchers are completely
> static. The next four is more "dynamic", used for documents I'm
> working on right now, but don't need to launch using keyboard
> shortcuts. That works well for me, because then I launch and switch to
> my most used applications using only the left hand, and the shortcuts
> get very familiar. The work I'm doing right now changes, so I have to
> look up the shortcut number in any case, meaning that it doesn't
> bother me that I have to use two hands. In that regard, it would be
> nice if we could make a certain window type ungroupable, so that you
> could easily switch between open writer documents, for instance.
>...

Yes, there may be a useful distinction between document-based
applications (for which it's best to show open documents in the
launcher) and other types (for which it's best to show the application
itself).

- -- 
mpt
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