3 ms·

I remember that at one point Canonical had done real user testing, bringing people to use stuff and watching them struggling. Big difference vs the other DE tha

I remember that at one point Canonical had done real user testing, bringing people to use stuff and watching them struggling. Big difference vs the other DE that they use now where some big ego dude instinct determines what is removed or changed for the sake of brand identity or futuristic design.

red_admiral 4y ago
Was that user testing on new users, or experienced ones? There's a big difference between how to make the onboarding as easy as possible for someone who's never used your system before, vs making it efficient to use for power users. The former gets you Ribbon UI and similar - which is really really good at that - but it means that people like me get annoyed when something they have to do 50 times a day now takes 3 clicks instead of one. I can understand that I'm on the losing end of a tradeoff that's a global improvement, but I still get annoyed. When you're building bazaars and not cathedrals though, there's no good reason why everyone should be using the same UI. Maybe I'm part of a 5% or less of the population who wants the title bar of the active window and only that to be my accent color, but the solution here is to just let me configure that. And I don't mean in the sense of "I can spend a summer learning and editing the source code and build a custom distro that looks the way I want", I mean that I remember the old days where this was either a switch, or the default, or a couple of lines in a config file. I gave up on GNOME when everything became "sure, you can do a term project on configuring the CSS files" if you really don't like THE ONE true design choice.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Unity had a lot of features for power users as well (good default shortcuts for ex.) and the global menu was a godsend on smaller screens. So I wouldn't say it's really an either-or scenario, just that tastes differ.
- simion314 4y ago
  I think there wee people that used computers before, user testing will usually identify situation you describe where doing a task takes too many clicks. My issue is with big ego people, they use the excuse of casual user to impose their views, I have a KDE example too (so GNOME users can stop downvoting this without any comment explaining why) , on KDE4 the big ego dude added a thing in the corner, "the cashew". the users asked for an option to hide the ugly thing but the dude refused to add an option, he refused patches,. Now some people will say that we the users do not understand that adding options is adding complexity but this is not the case here and in the end KDE removed it https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbox-icon https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbo... probably after the big ego dude left. This is not the only KDE example, t was the same with scrolling on some widgets, options to disable it was refused by same dude. No user testing, no group of people thinking about it, just one big ego person thinking that because he read half of a book he is a big visionary.
kkfx 4y ago
Probably you refer to the "forced" passage to Unity-Qt, who was not mature at that time, witch means buggy and laggy. BUT such move was not bad, was needed because too much people do not want to evolve, keeping on menus-based systems who start to age, without this move GNU/Linux would probably lost many new users who want modern desktops... Unfortunately modern desktops are still crappy floating WM with a completely lost design underneath but that's another story...

red_admiral 4y ago

Was that user testing on new users, or experienced ones? There's a big difference between how to make the onboarding as easy as possible for someone who's never used your system before, vs making it efficient to use for power users. The former gets you Ribbon UI and similar - which is really really good at that - but it means that people like me get annoyed when something they have to do 50 times a day now takes 3 clicks instead of one. I can understand that I'm on the losing end of a tradeoff that's a global improvement, but I still get annoyed. When you're building bazaars and not cathedrals though, there's no good reason why everyone should be using the same UI. Maybe I'm part of a 5% or less of the population who wants the title bar of the active window and only that to be my accent color, but the solution here is to just let me configure that. And I don't mean in the sense of "I can spend a summer learning and editing the source code and build a custom distro that looks the way I want", I mean that I remember the old days where this was either a switch, or the default, or a couple of lines in a config file. I gave up on GNOME when everything became "sure, you can do a term project on configuring the CSS files" if you really don't like THE ONE true design choice.

Avamander 4y ago
Unity had a lot of features for power users as well (good default shortcuts for ex.) and the global menu was a godsend on smaller screens. So I wouldn't say it's really an either-or scenario, just that tastes differ.
simion314 4y ago
I think there wee people that used computers before, user testing will usually identify situation you describe where doing a task takes too many clicks. My issue is with big ego people, they use the excuse of casual user to impose their views, I have a KDE example too (so GNOME users can stop downvoting this without any comment explaining why) , on KDE4 the big ego dude added a thing in the corner, "the cashew". the users asked for an option to hide the ugly thing but the dude refused to add an option, he refused patches,. Now some people will say that we the users do not understand that adding options is adding complexity but this is not the case here and in the end KDE removed it https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbox-icon https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/10/kde-kills-desktop-toolbo... probably after the big ego dude left. This is not the only KDE example, t was the same with scrolling on some widgets, options to disable it was refused by same dude. No user testing, no group of people thinking about it, just one big ego person thinking that because he read half of a book he is a big visionary.

kkfx 4y ago

Probably you refer to the "forced" passage to Unity-Qt, who was not mature at that time, witch means buggy and laggy. BUT such move was not bad, was needed because too much people do not want to evolve, keeping on menus-based systems who start to age, without this move GNU/Linux would probably lost many new users who want modern desktops... Unfortunately modern desktops are still crappy floating WM with a completely lost design underneath but that's another story...