Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3

[Anzan Hoshin Roshi]

Hello,

I would just like to bring this forward regarding GNOME's interface and the looming GNOME 3 and its "Shell".

I use GNOME on my main production box, Fluxbox on the netbook and laptops I have. Generally, we use Fluxbox at the monastery but I'm trying to stay in touch with what is going on for users (so I can answer questions occasionally on Ubuntu Forum) so am now writing this in GNOME. I run Metacity rather than Compiz. I have one panel, not expanded, and auto-hidden. I use it mainly to view the calendar or to dig down for something.  I've customized keybindings for switching workspaces to ALT + number keys because CTL+ALT and arrowing back and forth through each is just too slow. After much consideration regarding Mono, I've started using Do instead of the ALT+F2 run dialogue.

The "Shell" for GNOME 3 and it's overlay would be absolutely dreadful for me, and I think for some if not most users. I simply won't do the navigation of the cursor around and pointing and clicking, and having this huge menu thing taking over the desktop would make getting anything done more awkward than I can justify.

So here's the gist, the point, the nub:

How about allowing users to enable a right-click configurable menu on the root window so that those like me can still use GNOME?  I would prefer it to be configured using flat text but XML would be all right.

Tabbing windows as in Fluxbox would be great as well, but the most important thing for me would be being able to bypass the "Shell" overlay.

Thank you for reading this and I hope that you will consider this. And thank you to all who contribute to GNOME .

Anzan Hoshin
http://wwzc.org

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[Felipe Erias Morandeira]

Anzan Hoshin Roshi wrote:
> The "Shell" for GNOME 3 and it's overlay would be absolutely dreadful
> for me, and I think for some if not most users. I simply won't do the
> navigation of the cursor around and pointing and clicking, and having
> this huge menu thing taking over the desktop would make getting anything
> done more awkward than I can justify.

Wouldn't it be enough to have configurable key bindings to change the
desktop, open a new one, etc...? I would be greatly surprised if Gnome
Shell didn't support this.

I agree that Gnome Shell is obviously much more intrusive/disruptive
than Gnome-Do for the latter's particular use case.


Felipe



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[Liam R E Quin]

On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 19:16 +0200, Felipe Erias Morandeira wrote:
[...]
> Wouldn't it be enough to have configurable key bindings to change the
> desktop, open a new one, etc...?

How would you discover them?  The point of the right-click is that
it can be ubiquitous, or nearly so, and hence people are likely
to try it.


Liam



--
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[Felipe Erias Morandeira]

Liam R E Quin wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 19:16 +0200, Felipe Erias Morandeira wrote:
> [...]
>> Wouldn't it be enough to have configurable key bindings to change the
>> desktop, open a new one, etc...?
>
> How would you discover them?  The point of the right-click is that
> it can be ubiquitous, or nearly so, and hence people are likely
> to try it.

Dunno, same way other similar shortcuts are discovered? :-)

The problem with a right click is that it inherently creates a noun-verb
relationship between the element that you click on and the commands that
are presented (that's why is is often called a "contextual menu"), so
you have to make sure that both make sense together. For instance, in
the current GNOME the contextual options for the desktop are all actions
taht you can perform on the desktop itself (change background, create
file...). Now, I don't know what happens when you do a right click on
Gnome Shell's desktop, so I'm not sure if the options that you mention
would make sense in a contextual menu there.


Felipe
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[Karoliina Salminen]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Anzan Hoshin Roshi
<anzanhoshinroshi@...> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I would just like to bring this forward regarding GNOME's interface and the
> looming GNOME 3 and its "Shell".
>
> I use GNOME on my main production box, Fluxbox on the netbook and laptops I
> have. Generally, we use Fluxbox at the monastery but I'm trying to stay in
> touch with what is going on for users (so I can answer questions
> occasionally on Ubuntu Forum) so am now writing this in GNOME. I run
> Metacity rather than Compiz. I have one panel, not expanded, and
> auto-hidden. I use it mainly to view the calendar or to dig down for
> something.  I've customized keybindings for switching workspaces to ALT +
> number keys because CTL+ALT and arrowing back and forth through each is just
> too slow. After much consideration regarding Mono, I've started using Do
> instead of the ALT+F2 run dialogue.
>
> The "Shell" for GNOME 3 and it's overlay would be absolutely dreadful for
> me, and I think for some if not most users. I simply won't do the navigation
> of the cursor around and pointing and clicking, and having this huge menu
> thing taking over the desktop would make getting anything done more awkward
> than I can justify.
>
> So here's the gist, the point, the nub:
>
> How about allowing users to enable a right-click configurable menu on the
> root window so that those like me can still use GNOME?  I would prefer it to
> be configured using flat text but XML would be all right.
>
> Tabbing windows as in Fluxbox would be great as well, but the most important
> thing for me would be being able to bypass the "Shell" overlay.

Hi,

Can you explain how is this power user feature is related to usability?
You apparently are not a representative of normal users at all.
Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click configurable
this and that,
they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface they can click, pan,
maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it appeared
originally already
on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be sincere.

It is a good idea to support power user features, but design should never be
built around the power user features because that is not usability for
normal users,
that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe 0.01% of the users.

Best Regards,
Karoliina Salminen
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[Anzan Hoshin Roshi]

Hi,

Hello Karoliina,

Can you explain how is this power user feature is related to usability?
You apparently are not a representative of normal users at all.
Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click configurable
this and that,
they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface they can click, pan,
maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it appeared
originally already
on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be sincere.

It is a good idea to support power user features, but design should never be
built around the power user features because that is not usability for
normal users,
that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe 0.01% of the users.

Best Regards,
Karoliina Salminen

I apologize. Stormy Peters suggested this list to me for this topic. Can you suggest another?

Anzan Hoshin
http://wwzc.org

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[Stormy Peters-2]

Usability is not just about making things easy for novice users. It's about making an intuitive interface for people - all people.

My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise in the trade offs between the types of users.

Stormy

On Sep 30, 2009 11:36 PM, "Karoliina Salminen" <karoliina.t.salminen@...> wrote:

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM, Anzan Hoshin Roshi <anzanhoshinroshi@...> wrote: > Hello, > >...

Hi,

Can you explain how is this power user feature is related to usability?
You apparently are not a representative of normal users at all.
Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click configurable
this and that,
they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface they can click, pan,
maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it appeared
originally already
on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be sincere.

It is a good idea to support power user features, but design should never be
built around the power user features because that is not usability for
normal users,
that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe 0.01% of the users.

Best Regards,
Karoliina Salminen

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[Calum Benson]

On 1 Oct 2009, at 07:36, Karoliina Salminen wrote:

> It is a good idea to support power user features, but design should  
> never be
> built around the power user features because that is not usability for
> normal users, that is fast way to work for very advanced users,  
> maybe 0.01% of the users.

It depends on your definition of "built around".  Sure, we shouldn't  
be exposing hard-core expert features in a novice user's face.

However, power user features absolutely *should* be designed at the  
same time as novice features, so they can be integrated in a  
consistent fashion, and with a level of discoverability that will make  
them available as and when the user's experience and confidence begins  
to grow.

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
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mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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[Rick Spencer-4]

I agree with Stormy. It's not an "either/or" discussion. New users and frequent users should both like the system.

Probably the easiest way to get a list of what usability is "about", is to start with Jakob Nielsen's list of heuristics for his heuristic review method. This stuff has stood the test of time.

The "power user" heuristic is:
Flexibility and efficiency of use -
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

wikipedia has a good write up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation

--- On Thu, 10/1/09, Stormy Peters <stormy@...> wrote:

> From: Stormy Peters <stormy@...>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3
> To: "Karoliina Salminen" <karoliina.t.salminen@...>
> Cc: "Anzan Hoshin Roshi" <anzanhoshinroshi@...>, usability@...
> Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7:39 AM
> Usability is not just about making
> things easy for novice users. It's about making an
> intuitive interface for people - all people.
> My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise
> in the trade offs between the types of users.
> Stormy
> On Sep 30, 2009 11:36 PM,
> "Karoliina Salminen" <karoliina.t.salminen@...>
> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM,
> Anzan Hoshin Roshi
> <anzanhoshinroshi@...>
> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> >...Hi,
>
>
>
> Can you explain how is this power user feature is related
> to usability?
>
> You apparently are not a representative of normal users at
> all.
>
> Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click
> configurable
>
> this and that,
>
> they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface
> they can click, pan,
>
> maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it
> appeared
>
> originally already
>
> on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be
> sincere.
>
>
>
> It is a good idea to support power user features, but
> design should never be
>
> built around the power user features because that is not
> usability for
>
> normal users,
>
> that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe
> 0.01% of the users.
>
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Karoliina Salminen
>
> _______________________________________________
> Usability mailing list
> Usability@...
> http://ma...
>
> -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> Usability mailing list
> Usability@...
> http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
>

     
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[Anzan Hoshin Roshi]

Hello Again,

2009/10/1 Rick Spencer <moephan@...>

I agree with Stormy. It's not an "either/or" discussion. New users and frequent users should both like the system.

Probably the easiest way to get a list of what usability is "about", is to start with Jakob Nielsen's list of heuristics for his heuristic review method. This stuff has stood the test of time.

The "power user" heuristic is:
Flexibility and efficiency of use -
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

wikipedia has a good write up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation

--- On Thu, 10/1/09, Stormy Peters <stormy@...> wrote:

> From: Stormy Peters <stormy@...>
> Subject: Re: [Usability] Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3
> To: "Karoliina Salminen" <karoliina.t.salminen@...>
> Cc: "Anzan Hoshin Roshi" <anzanhoshinroshi@...>, usability@...
> Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7:39 AM

> Usability is not just about making
> things easy for novice users. It's about making an
> intuitive interface for people - all people.
> My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise
> in the trade offs between the types of users.
> Stormy

Thank you, Stormy and Rick.

Whether a right-click root menu is implemented or not (but as GNOME 3 is as yet far off so I ask it be contemplated), my issue is that I would like to use GNOME.

The stack is good (though sometimes precarious in Ubuntu so that a snag in Pidgin has sometimes required a reboot instead of just killing X and starting a new session) but the apps and basic framework are fantastic. I started out with apple in 1987, did Win 95 and up, tried Xandros (sound didn't work), then Vista finally gave me the final reason to not just use GIMP and OO.org and so on but a free OS. I've used GNOME in Debian, Gentoo, and Ubuntu.

Rebooting because I couldn't trace a problem with the whole GNOME DE loaded in Ubuntu made me look to Fluxbox for a more easily debuggable system,. which I find does what I need. But I still would like to be able to use GNOME. (I've tried KDE 3.5 and 4, Xmonad, Windowmaker, Awesome and so on.) I like GNOME. I will use its apps and underthings in and under Fluxbox. But I would like to be able to just use GNOME.

I am not a "poweruser". I use X, after all. And the monastics here at Zen Centre do not regard themselves as such. One said to me regarding this conversation today, "But I'm an old lady and I want a root menu at right-click." As forme, I just need to be able to get to and do tasks.

At the very least, I would appreciate it if GNOME devs bear in mind that the new "Shell" might or might not be useful to some new and old users but they could also provide a way for people to use GNOME without being distracted <i>by</i> GNOME and having to fiddle with obtrusive imaginary artifiacts to get to a workspace, document, or file. The Desktop is not a place, it is just a metaphor for a file. Right-clicking there (or even on any file) could give a menu option. If chosen, then users would be able to just do what they want to do instead of flinging the cursor about to aim st this or that cartoon image.

Please, just do not make the "Shell" unavoidablle and provide easily acessible means of configuring the DE.

Thank you for your patience in reading this. And thanks also for your work on FLOSS. My teeth would fall out without it.

Yours,
Anzan Hoshin
http://wwzc.org

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[Karoliina Salminen]

Hi,

The reason why I pointed out the right click as problematic is the following:
- what if you have single button mouse (Macs have single button mouse
by default)
- what if you have a touch screen (like Asus eeTop or whatever it was called),
the release cycle of Gnome has been very slow and the touch screens
will be norm before
3.0 is most likely even done. There is no right click on touch screen.
- what if the screen is multi-touch screen? I guess the Asus uses
resistive touch screen, but sooner or later
these will have capacitive screens. That means how we use computer
changes quite radically and
we get rid of the mouse-keyboard combination pretty much.

Of course there are ways to simulate right click, but I think it would
be good to plan them in advance
before deciding something. E.g. long steady (not moving) press can be
interpreted as right click.
But using something very frequently used thing with this long tap
might not be the most inconvenient
way.

I am thinking outside of the click and point a box context always
because there are no boxes
for me, just means to get the interaction completed as simply as
possible without restricting thinking
to what is currently available or how it has been always done.

Getting app menu open with right click might be easy on a PC with
mouse with multiple buttons.
But I am sure Gnome desktop will be run on all kinds of machines which
may have only one mouse button
or they may have touch screen or multitouch screen (unless it is
designed to be unsuitable for those use cases like the current Gnome
is).

Best Regards,
Karoliina




On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 4:32 AM, Anzan Hoshin Roshi
<anzanhoshinroshi@...> wrote:

> Hello Again,
>
> 2009/10/1 Rick Spencer <moephan@...>
>>
>> I agree with Stormy. It's not an "either/or" discussion. New users and
>> frequent users should both like the system.
>>
>> Probably the easiest way to get a list of what usability is "about", is to
>> start with Jakob Nielsen's list of heuristics for his heuristic review
>> method. This stuff has stood the test of time.
>>
>> The "power user" heuristic is:
>> Flexibility and efficiency of use -
>> Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the
>> interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both
>> inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
>>
>> wikipedia has a good write up:
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation
>>
>> --- On Thu, 10/1/09, Stormy Peters <stormy@...> wrote:
>>
>> > From: Stormy Peters <stormy@...>
>> > Subject: Re: [Usability] Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3
>> > To: "Karoliina Salminen" <karoliina.t.salminen@...>
>> > Cc: "Anzan Hoshin Roshi" <anzanhoshinroshi@...>,
>> > usability@...
>> > Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7:39 AM
>> > Usability is not just about making
>> > things easy for novice users. It's about making an
>> > intuitive interface for people - all people.
>> > My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise
>> > in the trade offs between the types of users.
>> > Stormy
>
> Thank you, Stormy and Rick.
>
> Whether a right-click root menu is implemented or not (but as GNOME 3 is as
> yet far off so I ask it be contemplated), my issue is that I would like to
> use GNOME.
>
> The stack is good (though sometimes precarious in Ubuntu so that a snag in
> Pidgin has sometimes required a reboot instead of just killing X and
> starting a new session) but the apps and basic framework are fantastic. I
> started out with apple in 1987, did Win 95 and up, tried Xandros (sound
> didn't work), then Vista finally gave me the final reason to not just use
> GIMP and OO.org and so on but a free OS. I've used GNOME in Debian, Gentoo,
> and Ubuntu.
>
> Rebooting because I couldn't trace a problem with the whole GNOME DE loaded
> in Ubuntu made me look to Fluxbox for a more easily debuggable system,.
> which I find does what I need. But I still would like to be able to use
> GNOME. (I've tried KDE 3.5 and 4, Xmonad, Windowmaker, Awesome and so on.) I
> like GNOME. I will use its apps and underthings in and under Fluxbox. But I
> would like to be able to just use GNOME.
>
> I am not a "poweruser". I use X, after all. And the monastics here at Zen
> Centre do not regard themselves as such. One said to me regarding this
> conversation today, "But I'm an old lady and I want a root menu at
> right-click." As forme, I just need to be able to get to and do tasks.
>
> At the very least, I would appreciate it if GNOME devs bear in mind that the
> new "Shell" might or might not be useful to some new and old users but they
> could also provide a way for people to use GNOME without being distracted
> <i>by</i> GNOME and having to fiddle with obtrusive imaginary artifiacts to
> get to a workspace, document, or file. The Desktop is not a place, it is
> just a metaphor for a file. Right-clicking there (or even on any file) could
> give a menu option. If chosen, then users would be able to just do what they
> want to do instead of flinging the cursor about to aim st this or that
> cartoon image.
>
> Please, just do not make the "Shell" unavoidablle and provide easily
> acessible means of configuring the DE.
>
> Thank you for your patience in reading this. And thanks also for your work
> on FLOSS. My teeth would fall out without it.
>
> Yours,
> Anzan Hoshin
> http://wwzc.org
>
>
>

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[natan yellin]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Karoliina Salminen <karoliina.t.salminen@...> wrote:

Hi,

The reason why I pointed out the right click as problematic is the following:
- what if you have single button mouse (Macs have single button mouse
by default)
- what if you have a touch screen (like Asus eeTop or whatever it was called),
the release cycle of Gnome has been very slow and the touch screens
will be norm before
3.0 is most likely even done. There is no right click on touch screen.
- what if the screen is multi-touch screen? I guess the Asus uses
resistive touch screen, but sooner or later
these will have capacitive screens. That means how we use computer
changes quite radically and
we get rid of the mouse-keyboard combination pretty much.

None of those reasons make a right-click "power menu" problematic. As long as a power feature isn't the primary way of doing something (in which case it wouldn't be a power feature anymore), its OK if some users can't use the feature. In fact, if we provide special power features to touch screen users (and we most certainly should) then those features wont be usable by normal desktop users.

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[Kirk Bridger]

The definition of "Usability" and how it can be evaluated is an interesting topic.   I'm presenting my thoughts on it (and a little more) at BAWorld Vancouver at the end of October.

Here's [1] a link to my presentation as it provides a lot more details than this email does.  It's best reviewed in slideshow mode as I have overlapping text without animations.

Basically though I think the problem here is that we don't have a clear definition of who our users are.  There's tribal knowledge for some that are involved, but I don't believe there's any actual consensus.   I think this is part of the root of the problem that Shuttleworth mentioned in his recent presentation - Open Source struggles with usability in a different way than proprietary.  Typically OSS projects have very specific users in mind during design, and then the results are used by a lot of people that were originally "out of scope" or who were not the target audience.

I think Gnome Shell has the potential to experience this problem very severely and believe we should be doing early usability testing and analysis - well, too late for early, but we should get started on it asap.

Gnome 3 should have a very broad audience, for obvious reasons.  But that doesn't mean we should design for everyone, as then you run into the "elastic user" problem.

Do we have a clear definition of Gnome 3's (or even Gnome Shell's) users, tasks, and context of use?  The recent discussion on touch interfaces, notebooks etc falls into context I believe.

As for design concepts - I think Schneiderman's 8 Golden Rules are a nice, manageable set (which is different than heuristics).  I find them more applicable and concrete than Nielsen's list (which he created for web sites I believe) - I give quite a few examples in the presentation.

I'll reply to Brian Cameron's recent post on list, but I wanted to share my thoughts and presentation on this thread too, as the topic is a very interesting one for discussion.

If anyone has comments or questions about my presentation, I'd be happy to respond to them on or off list

Kirk
kbridger@...

[1] http://thebside.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Kirk-Bridger-Eliminating-The-Odd-submitted.odp




Rick Spencer wrote:

I agree with Stormy. It's not an "either/or" discussion. New users and frequent users should both like the system.

Probably the easiest way to get a list of what usability is "about", is to start with Jakob Nielsen's list of heuristics for his heuristic review method. This stuff has stood the test of time.

The "power user" heuristic is:
Flexibility and efficiency of use -
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

wikipedia has a good write up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation

--- On Thu, 10/1/09, Stormy Peters stormy@... wrote:

  

From: Stormy Peters stormy@...
Subject: Re: [Usability] Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3
To: "Karoliina Salminen" karoliina.t.salminen@...
Cc: "Anzan Hoshin Roshi" anzanhoshinroshi@..., usability@...
Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7:39 AM
Usability is not just about making
things easy for novice users. It's about making an
intuitive interface for people - all people.
My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise
in the trade offs between the types of users.
Stormy
On Sep 30, 2009 11:36 PM,
"Karoliina Salminen" karoliina.t.salminen@...
wrote:

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM,
Anzan Hoshin Roshi
anzanhoshinroshi@...
wrote:
    

Hello,

...Hi,
      

Can you explain how is this power user feature is related
to usability?

You apparently are not a representative of normal users at
all.

Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click
configurable

this and that,

they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface
they can click, pan,

maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it
appeared

originally already

on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be
sincere.



It is a good idea to support power user features, but
design should never be

built around the power user features because that is not
usability for

normal users,

that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe
0.01% of the users.



Best Regards,

Karoliina Salminen

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[Anzan Hoshin Roshi]

Hi Karoliina,

While it might be good to take netbooks and other devices in mind, I think that designing a UI that is skewed towards that format is less than useful.

Perhaps a "netbook remix" of GNOME would be better.

Regarding that though, I thought that I'd mention that the Eee that I bought had the Xandros interface. I immediately switched it to the full KDE desktop while researching other options. I finally installed Ubuntu and Fluxbox. GNOME couldn't manage the windows as well.

Regarding netbook remixes such as Ubuntu's. I find them confusing. I need to spend too much time figuring out what an icon stands for or just ignore them and read the text.

When setting up netbooks for other people (including three proverbial "old ladies") I found that they too were boggled by the big icons and panels and so set up Fluxbox for them. The right click menu made immediate sense to them as I had set up the menu with the applications they most used and it was available wherever their cursor was, and had set apps to open in named workspaces such as "web", "writing", "music" and so on.

Kirk,
Your .odp presentation was interesting.

Anzan Hoshin
http://wwzc.org

2009/10/2 Kirk Bridger <kbridger@...>

The definition of "Usability" and how it can be evaluated is an interesting topic.   I'm presenting my thoughts on it (and a little more) at BAWorld Vancouver at the end of October.

Here's [1] a link to my presentation as it provides a lot more details than this email does.  It's best reviewed in slideshow mode as I have overlapping text without animations.

Basically though I think the problem here is that we don't have a clear definition of who our users are.  There's tribal knowledge for some that are involved, but I don't believe there's any actual consensus.   I think this is part of the root of the problem that Shuttleworth mentioned in his recent presentation - Open Source struggles with usability in a different way than proprietary.  Typically OSS projects have very specific users in mind during design, and then the results are used by a lot of people that were originally "out of scope" or who were not the target audience.

I think Gnome Shell has the potential to experience this problem very severely and believe we should be doing early usability testing and analysis - well, too late for early, but we should get started on it asap.

Gnome 3 should have a very broad audience, for obvious reasons.  But that doesn't mean we should design for everyone, as then you run into the "elastic user" problem.

Do we have a clear definition of Gnome 3's (or even Gnome Shell's) users, tasks, and context of use?  The recent discussion on touch interfaces, notebooks etc falls into context I believe.

As for design concepts - I think Schneiderman's 8 Golden Rules are a nice, manageable set (which is different than heuristics).  I find them more applicable and concrete than Nielsen's list (which he created for web sites I believe) - I give quite a few examples in the presentation.

I'll reply to Brian Cameron's recent post on list, but I wanted to share my thoughts and presentation on this thread too, as the topic is a very interesting one for discussion.

If anyone has comments or questions about my presentation, I'd be happy to respond to them on or off list

Kirk
kbridger@...

[1] http://thebside.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/Kirk-Bridger-Eliminating-The-Odd-submitted.odp

Rick Spencer wrote:

I agree with Stormy. It's not an "either/or" discussion. New users and frequent users should both like the system.

Probably the easiest way to get a list of what usability is "about", is to start with Jakob Nielsen's list of heuristics for his heuristic review method. This stuff has stood the test of time.

The "power user" heuristic is:
Flexibility and efficiency of use -
Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

wikipedia has a good write up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuristic_evaluation

--- On Thu, 10/1/09, Stormy Peters stormy@... wrote:

  

From: Stormy Peters stormy@...
Subject: Re: [Usability] Requesting a right-click root menu for GNOME 3
To: "Karoliina Salminen" karoliina.t.salminen@...
Cc: "Anzan Hoshin Roshi" anzanhoshinroshi@..., usability@...
Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7:39 AM
Usability is not just about making
things easy for novice users. It's about making an
intuitive interface for people - all people.
My understanding is that many of the difficulties arise
in the trade offs between the types of users.
Stormy
On Sep 30, 2009 11:36 PM,
"Karoliina Salminen" karoliina.t.salminen@...
wrote:

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:30 PM,
Anzan Hoshin Roshi
anzanhoshinroshi@...
wrote:
    

Hello,

...Hi,
      

Can you explain how is this power user feature is related
to usability?

You apparently are not a representative of normal users at
all.

Normal users don't know key shortcuts and right click
configurable

this and that,

they want a plain, simple, slick and cool user interface
they can click, pan,

maybe zoom, etc. These right click main menu (like it
appeared

originally already

on fvwm when I was a kid) schemes are so 80s to be
sincere.



It is a good idea to support power user features, but
design should never be

built around the power user features because that is not
usability for

normal users,

that is fast way to work for very advanced users, maybe
0.01% of the users.



Best Regards,

Karoliina Salminen

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[Calum Benson]

On 2 Oct 2009, at 14:48, Karoliina Salminen wrote:

> Hi,
>
> The reason why I pointed out the right click as problematic is the  
> following:
> - what if you have single button mouse (Macs have single button mouse
> by default)

And yet, Macs have also had right-click menus for many years :)

> - what if you have a touch screen (like Asus eeTop or whatever it  
> was called),
> the release cycle of Gnome has been very slow and the touch screens
> will be norm before
> 3.0 is most likely even done. There is no right click on touch screen.
> - what if the screen is multi-touch screen? I guess the Asus uses
> resistive touch screen, but sooner or later
> these will have capacitive screens. That means how we use computer
> changes quite radically and
> we get rid of the mouse-keyboard combination pretty much.

Right-click menus are supposed to be shortcuts to functionality that  
you can already access in some other way.  Assuming that doesn't  
change, none of these issues are particularly problematic.  If there's  
no way to physically access a right-click menu on a particular device,  
then it will just never be seen, and users will just have to use the  
primary point of access instead (which will, one would hope, have been  
somewhat optimized for that device anyway).

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer     Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum.benson@...            OpenSolaris Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             [phone]

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems

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[Jacob Beauregard]

Calum Benson wrote:

>
> On 2 Oct 2009, at 14:48, Karoliina Salminen wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> The reason why I pointed out the right click as problematic is the
>> following:
>> - what if you have single button mouse (Macs have single button mouse
>> by default)
>
> And yet, Macs have also had right-click menus for many years :)

I still hate single button mouses.

>
>> - what if you have a touch screen (like Asus eeTop or whatever it was
>> called),
>> the release cycle of Gnome has been very slow and the touch screens
>> will be norm before
>> 3.0 is most likely even done. There is no right click on touch screen.
>> - what if the screen is multi-touch screen? I guess the Asus uses
>> resistive touch screen, but sooner or later
>> these will have capacitive screens. That means how we use computer
>> changes quite radically and
>> we get rid of the mouse-keyboard combination pretty much.
>

Right-clicks would be interesting in a multitouch environment. You know
what I just realized though--- I was watching the Google Wave demo for
the first time the other day, and it kind of looks like a backward
version of list emails--- where replies are indented rather than the
original post, with a lot of additional features.

> Right-click menus are supposed to be shortcuts to functionality that
> you can already access in some other way.  Assuming that doesn't
> change, none of these issues are particularly problematic.  If there's
> no way to physically access a right-click menu on a particular device,
> then it will just never be seen, and users will just have to use the
> primary point of access instead (which will, one would hope, have been
> somewhat optimized for that device anyway).
>
> Cheeri,
> Calum.
>

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