Comments on: Control center refresh

By: liberforce

liberforce — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:19:18 +0000

Maybe my remark is irelevant, but did you think about a tag cloud or something similar to help categorize the features ? Also, tagging to help choose the settings to configure may be an option.
This is the work that has been presented in GUADEC 2008 on printing, and it was fairly impressive. You should give it a look.
http://www.mmiworks.net/eng/publications/2008_07_01_archive.html

By: Kristin Travis

Kristin Travis — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:23:14 +0000

All,

Thanks for the comments. The end users that we talked to in our
usability study helped to focus this work on the launcher
direction. But I see the majority of the comments from the community prefer the Control Center approach. Based on this, I’m considering getting some additional user feedback comparing the two approaches before continuing any work.

I’ll be pulling together a plan in the next few days, so please feel free to add your comments to that if you’re interested.

Thanks,
Kristin

By: James

James — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:59:58 +0000

I *really* don’t like the mockup in Matt’s comment. There’s just too much information to process at once with all the text and icons. Plus, having sideways text like that is harder to read, and it took me several seconds to notice it.

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:57:59 +0000

Oh wow, didn’t even notice the mouseover the first time I tried the flash demo, (although I did click on several of the icons) so definitely thumbs down for discovery on that one.

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:53:07 +0000

Having the search on the top uses vital vertical screen real-estate; OTOH maybe this is more what people are used to.

I’m ambivilent about grouping down to more icons; you have to remember where your going although it’s less cluttered at the beginning.

The mockup in Matts comment looks nice for sure

By: Nil

Nil — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:49:58 +0000

More Mac-wannabeism. Joy.

And no categories! Genius.

By: Rafael

Rafael — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:06:52 +0000

I think there might still be some ambiguity for novice users, like for instance “Audio & Video” and “Display”… non-geeks may understand Video and Display as the same thing. “Application Preferences” is somewhat vague, potentially scary, and also conflicts a bit with “Desktop” since it configures a portion of the Desktop behavior (eg: how to handle HTTP URLs and such).

By: Sam Thursfield

Sam Thursfield — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:27:12 +0000

Hi,
Although it’s always nice seeing people work on improving GNOME, I like the menu the way it is. There are fewer clicks between me and the relevant control dialog that I want. It seems to me this is painting a bike shed which is already quite a nice colour …

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 22:18:41 +0000

I am with dr88dr88,

The mockup mentioned[1] is very nice! Just need to make sure all the icons are of a high quality.

1. http://live.gnome.org/UsabilityProject/Whiteboard/ControlCenter/Sun/OtherOptions?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=Control-Center_ICON-VIEW.png

By: James

James — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:16:29 +0000

At first glance, it reminds me a lot of the XFCE control center. This is only a good thing.

At second glance, I’m not sure how much I like the tool-tip menus in the flash demo. The mockup shown at the bottom of the usability study looks pretty neat, though I suppose it obscures more information than the tool-tip menus.