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> The goal of this tool is to help improve GNOME, by providing data that can inform design decisions, [...] I suppose that collecting data about Gnome config

> The goal of this tool is to help improve GNOME, by providing data that can inform design decisions, [...] I suppose that collecting data about Gnome configurations will provide data just marginally useful to inform design decisions. Anecdotal point: last month I installed Debian+Gnome on my father's new laptop. He's a retiree, and not a all a techie. He wasn't thrilled with the textless icons on the left but thought that even if he could not get used to tell them apart, he could always rely on their hover info. But he really wanted a direct access to the handful of documents he regularly opens (mostly texts). Of course, he needed links/bookmarks that showed the name of the files. I couldn't find a way to do this with the default Gnome. I tried for an hour to make it work with an extension supposed to enable desktop icons, but failed (extension broken with Gnome4?). I installed Mate instead of Gnome, and that's it. My conclusion: Gnome is too simple, it lacks features even for old noobs, and even more for power users.

ReactiveJelly 4y ago
I don't know how anybody gets on without text. I see coworkers who have a default Windows 10 setup, with the titles of windows hidden. They'll have 10+ Chrome windows open, 5+ spreadsheets, and then each Chrome window has 20 tabs in it. And despite all that, they still don't think to do "Open Link in New Tab", and they lose track of where they are in our web app. Maybe I should add breadcrumb nav. And of course, window management is rare. Maximize everything, even terminals. Maybe people really do have fundamentally different brains from each other. Maybe they memorize the positions of the icons and get by. I have to have text, and I bookmark and close tabs aggressively to keep it all clean.
- rcxdude 4y ago
  > Maybe people really do have fundamentally different brains from each other I think this is a big thing. People have vastly different approaches to interacting with a UI, especially one they use everyday, and it's foolish to think there's a good one-size-fits-all approach. See this article for a good example of bad data-driven thinking of this sort which can happen in a field we can objectively measure (or the 80/20 rule, where 80% of users only use 20% of features in a product. Problem being they all use a different 20% of features): https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

ReactiveJelly 4y ago

I don't know how anybody gets on without text. I see coworkers who have a default Windows 10 setup, with the titles of windows hidden. They'll have 10+ Chrome windows open, 5+ spreadsheets, and then each Chrome window has 20 tabs in it. And despite all that, they still don't think to do "Open Link in New Tab", and they lose track of where they are in our web app. Maybe I should add breadcrumb nav. And of course, window management is rare. Maximize everything, even terminals. Maybe people really do have fundamentally different brains from each other. Maybe they memorize the positions of the icons and get by. I have to have text, and I bookmark and close tabs aggressively to keep it all clean.

rcxdude 4y ago
> Maybe people really do have fundamentally different brains from each other I think this is a big thing. People have vastly different approaches to interacting with a UI, especially one they use everyday, and it's foolish to think there's a good one-size-fits-all approach. See this article for a good example of bad data-driven thinking of this sort which can happen in a field we can objectively measure (or the 80/20 rule, where 80% of users only use 20% of features in a product. Problem being they all use a different 20% of features): https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-force-discovered-the-flaw-of-averages.html https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...