SCALE: Understanding Unity [LWN.net]

SCALE: Understanding Unity

Posted Mar 3, 2011 23:49 UTC (Thu) by Simetrical (guest, #53439)
Parent article: SCALE: Understanding Unity

I have to say, I was previously somewhat wary of Unity (not having read that much about it). After reading this article, I think it sounds like a superb decision on Canonical's part, and really look forward to trying it out. This is how UI should be done: by running constant usability studies.

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SCALE: Understanding Unity

Posted Mar 4, 2011 16:11 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Well, Ubuntu's notification popups came from the same usability studies and they're pretty horrible.

So, yes, usability studies can be really good for fine-tuning the UI, but they can also consume a crapload of time and effort and produce little more than selection bias. They're not easy to do well.

Also, they can't actually do any design: start with a crap idea, end with a crap idea, no matter how many users you run it past.

SCALE: Understanding Unity

Posted Mar 4, 2011 17:17 UTC (Fri) by Simetrical (guest, #53439) [Link]

The notification popups are sort of awful, yeah. The concept isn't necessarily terrible, but the usage in practice is annoying. Like how Pidgin by default pops up (or used to pop up) a notification for every message, even if the actual message window is open and focused. I think it's fine for stuff like volume changes or network connectivity changes, though.

Realistically, though, it's hard to make *more* of a UI trainwreck than a typical application does (open-source or not). Usability studies are no guarantee of anything, but they're a step in the right direction. I remain optimistic.