Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it) [LWN.net]

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 18, 2012 15:33 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it) by slashdot
Parent article: Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Oh, and for a good percentage of the users, there is NO WAY that you'll convince them that their opinion about font hinting, alt-tab behavior or a lot of other options is "wrong".

Citation needed™.

I don't have statistic for desktop UI, but I have access to the statistic of UI for web sites. Most users accept (or reject) UI "as is". Few change some trivial setting. And even users who are firmly convinced that some aspect of UI is "wrong" stay if the rest of the package looks good.

In fact, they'll initially think that even if the setting is present, and will then add "well at least I can change the idiotic setting" once they find it, so it's very important to make sure they can find it as soon as possible before they throw your software out of the window.

Surprisingly enough it's absolutely not important. Knobs create "I'm in control" felling, but that's it. Joel writes about it:

Vary the placement of some things, change the look and feel and fonts, move the logo and make it bigger or smaller. Let them feel important by giving them non-crucial lipstick-on-a-chicken stuff to muck around with. They can't do much damage to your schedule here. A good interior decorator is constantly bringing their client swatches and samples and stuff to choose from. But they would never discuss dishwasher placement with the client. It goes next to the sink, no matter what the client wants. There's no sense wasting time arguing about where the dishwasher goes, it has to go next to the sink, don't even bring it up; let the clients get their design kicks doing some harmless thing like changing their mind 200 times about whether to use Italian Granite or Mexican Tiles or Norwegian wood butcher-block for the countertops.

It's the same with UI (and this is where KDE4 fails utterly): you need a lot of options in "Preferences" dialog or else a lot of people will feel that they don't have enough control over situation. But these must be harmless, easy to implement options (distance between icons, color of elements, etc). What you should not do is to add options which are hard to implement and can destabilize the codebase.

to post comments

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 8:27 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (37 responses)

Well, some people might indeed not care or even like any change.

However, there are certainly groups who will care:
1. Programmers and power users are very likely to care
2. People who are just routinely upgrading to the Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. current release, and thus get new desktop environments as a byproduct, and aren't looking for any change in the UI

It goes without saying, but those are two extremely important classes of users.

> But these must be harmless, easy to implement options (distance between icons, color of elements, etc). What you should not do is to add options which are hard to implement and can destabilize the codebase.

No, what you should do is including useful options and features, especially the ones that everyone else expects to be there because GNOME 2, Windows 7 or Mac OS X have them.

Of course, it all needs to be presented intelligently, and in a way that doesn't force a casual users to configure anything.

In general, simply asking users whether they are power users or not, and which desktop environment they are familiar with should cover a huge amount of ground already.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 9:36 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (36 responses)

> 1. Programmers

Those has the power to change pretty much everything by writing an extension they don't even have to download and change the code itself.

> power users

There is no such thing. We had this discussion in the other gnome3 article nobody that was talking about "power user" could describe what a "power user" is other than a buzz word being used to say "I am special".

> 2. People who are just routinely upgrading to the Fedora/Ubuntu/etc. current release, and thus get new desktop environments as a byproduct, and aren't looking for any change in the UI

Conservative people shouldn't be using fast moving distros because change is part of the game here. There some distros that change less often and let you some time to adapt to said changes.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 10:16 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (24 responses)

> Those has the power to change pretty much everything by writing an extension they don't even have to download and change the code itself.

So you are saying that the fact that a programmer has an ability to program, together with a fact that the new shiny desktop can be customized by programming, means that the desktop can be regarded as sufficiently configurable?

I see three possibilities here: 1. I completely misunderstand your point, in which case do please clarify; 2. you are on drugs; 3. you are severely underage.

> Conservative people shouldn't be using fast moving distros because change is part of the game here.

Here, waitaminute. So for how long will Gnome 2 be continued to be supported? Or are you saying that by the time Gnome 3 is considered "production-quality" (I thought it already is considered so, but what do I know) it will have feature parity with Gnome 2 and won't require Gnome 2 users to perform any extra configuration?

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 10:41 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (23 responses)

> So you are saying that the fact that a programmer has an ability to program, together with a fact that the new shiny desktop can be customized by programming, means that the desktop can be regarded as sufficiently configurable?

Yes, but you do not have to be a programmer to take advantage of that i.e you might as well just go to extension.gnome.org and install the customization that you want to have.

> Here, waitaminute. So for how long will Gnome 2 be continued to be supported?

Red Hat have said to support older RHEL releases for a longer period of time which implies gnome2 support (same for CentOS etc. if you don't want to pay for a subscription).

> Or are you saying that by the time Gnome 3 is considered "production-quality" (I thought it already is considered so, but what do I know) it will have feature parity with Gnome 2 and won't require Gnome 2 users to perform any extra configuration?

Just go back a bit in time and remember the flames the GNOME2 release brought up. With the increasing developed time and subsequent releases the "gnome2 suxxs give me back 1.x" flames comes to halt. There is no reason to think gnome3 will be any different.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 12:34 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (22 responses)

> you do not have to be a programmer to take advantage of that i.e you might as well just go to extension.gnome.org and install the customization that you want to have.

Surely you must be joking? Let's take an example: In Gnome 2, I can position the panel vertically by tweaking an obviously-placed knob in the preferences dialog that is predictably available by right-clicking on the panel. How do I do that in Gnome 3? Do you idiots realize that this is not such as esoteric thing to want? Why did you introduce this obvious UX regression? Also, what is that bottom space-wasting black bar for and how do I make it go away? Will you only be satisfied after reducing my usable vertical space to one row? I realize there may be "extensions" that do those things (not exactly holding my breath here, though), but how exactly am I supposed to locate them? Are you seriously expecting me to sift through the list of all the junk on that site to find out?

> Red Hat have said to support older RHEL

Why thank you, but I use Debian, and I don't want to condemn myself to running a whole hopelessly obsolete userland just because the desktop interface has become unusable.

The whole brouhaha stems from the basic fact that you fuckers don't even *pretend* to care about your existing users, see. You think we have infinite time. You think we don't have anything more interesting to do than working around your regressions. If you idiots wouldn't call your newfangled abortion "Gnome" and wouldn't subvert the existing package namespace and libraries (yes, I know about MATE and will absolutely try it if/when it is officially packaged by Debian), that alone would avoid *all* the backlash, but you imbeciles haven't even considered the possibility, have you? Oh, and did I mention that spit in the face called "compatibility mode"? What exactly is it supposed to be compatible with? Why not call it "degraded mode"? You cannot even get the basic terminology straight.

But hey, good luck with basking in the positive reviews by habitual Linux conference-goers.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 13:04 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

BTW, to expand on this specific issue, all versions of Windows (the market leading OS) allow users to move the panel to any edge of the screen, by simply unlocking it and then dragging it, and apparently in OS X you can do the same, although you need to use the command line.

How one can even IMAGINE of not having a feature which used to be available on ALL previous desktop environments (GNOME 2, Windows, OS X) and that has obvious use cases (such as maximizing the number of lines of a document that are visible, or just liking it another way) boggles the mind.

Language warning...

Posted Feb 19, 2012 15:20 UTC (Sun) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link]

While our editor takes a well deserved Sunday off, lets just point out that such strong language is certain to be unwelcome on LWN. Especially for something as banal as a nice desktop flame-fest.

(I share your frustration with the disruption that existing users have been put through by all the major desktop environments.)

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 15:32 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (19 responses)

This kind of hostility toward people who give you their software for free is misplaced and not welcome here. Disagreeing with their direction is fine; profane ad hominem attacks are not.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 17:39 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (18 responses)

Your point about profanity is duly noted. Sorry, got carried away.

Also let me apologize about the last bit concerning 'compatibility mode' -- I misremembered, it's actually 'fallback mode', and that name is indeed apt (even if somewhat prone to misunderstanding).

I don't, in this case, buy the usual rhetoric about tiptoeing around people who 'give their software for free'. It's not applicable here, because the issue here is not labor. It's about policy. There must be a specific person out there, or several specific people, who have specifically decided to replace the existing and perfectly working desktop environment with something radically different. They obviously did not have to do that, and the arguments about it being a cost-saving measure are not particularly convincing. I resent that decision, and I do indeed resent those people, personally, whoever they are, for making that decision.

Also, 'ad hominem' does not mean what you seem to think it means.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 18:30 UTC (Sun) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (17 responses)

"You fuckers".

"You imbiciles".

That is very much attacking the person; if you think ad hominem means something else, so be it.

As for the rest, nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to switch to their new stuff. But, likewise, you cannot hold a gun to their heads and force them to maintain something that does not match their idea of where the desktop should go. Those who have read these pages know that I have not always agreed with their ideas, but I still do not think this sort of talk is appropriate.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 18:58 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (16 responses)

> That is very much attacking the person; if you think ad hominem means something else, so be it.

Indeed it was attacking people (not the specific person I was technically replying to, though, I thought that was obvious enough what with the unfortunate expletives being plural), and 'ad hominem' does mean something else (specifically, it names a debating strategy where attacking a person is used as a (fallacious) means to undermine the idea that person stands for. There's no idea to undermine here, however, as the attacks are purely for their own sake). My sincere apologies for this tedious pedantry!

> nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to switch to their new stuff

Of course, but the mainstream distros don't really give you the choice to stay with the old stuff, now do they? That's as close to the proverbial gun to user's head as those things ever get.

> you cannot hold a gun to their heads and force them to maintain something that does not match their idea of where the desktop should go

Yeah, just providing some lightly-filtered feedback here. In my experience, honest people tend to appreciate honest feedback.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 19:35 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (6 responses)

You are using pedantry to deviate from the fact that you were swearing rudely. That's not merely being honest. If you can't be polite, your points are not worth making.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 19:57 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (5 responses)

> You are using pedantry to deviate from the fact that you were swearing rudely.

How does one "deviate from a fact" and what does that even mean? (If you are trying to imply that I'm using pedantry to divert attention from the swearing, then that's not true. I've apologized for the swearing already -- hey, it *was* overboard, although intentionally so. I definitely stand by the underlying resentment, though). The pedantry is there because the rampant misuse of the term 'ad hominem' happens to be a pet peave of mine, is all.

> If you can't be polite, your points are not worth making.

As for this statement, I'm afraid I've utterly failed to discern any meaning whatsoever. Do elaborate.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 20:40 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (4 responses)

If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be polite and not play word games which you seem to be insisting on doing. Nothing further to elaborate.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 20:44 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (2 responses)

I've already made my point and have nothing to add, so I'm not sure what do you want from me now.

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 21:07 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

You asked me to elaborate and I have clarified what I said. What you can do is ack that and hopefully be a better netizen. Good luck!

Enough

Posted Feb 19, 2012 21:12 UTC (Sun) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link]

Sure. Thanks, sheriff!

Enough

Posted Feb 22, 2012 11:32 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be polite and not play word games which you seem to be insisting on doing. Nothing further to elaborate

The funny thing is, you (rahulsundarum) are currently engaging in a *textbook* example of an ad-hominem argument.

If you want to be taken seriously, try making sensible logical points rather than derailing the discussion by attacking the manner in which your opponent's points are *presented*.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 12:17 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (8 responses)

> Of course, but the mainstream distros don't really give you the choice to stay with the old stuff, now do they? That's as close to the proverbial gun to user's head as those things ever get.

Not really the distros are as well free to do what they think is right. You must just accept that nobody has any obligation to provide you with the software you want for free.

You can either work on it yourself or convince others to do it, the later does not work by trowing around insults.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 13:22 UTC (Mon) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (7 responses)

I'm actually quite open to an idea of paying money to someone who'd maintain a reasonably up-to-date Debian-based rolling distribution, for the service of providing me a sane, modern and non-disrupting desktop experience. Can't see anyone offering such a service, though. My guess would be this is because Linux users who care about sane (i.e. CATD-free, i.e. not Gnome- or KDE-based) desktop experience either end up rolling their own (suboptimal, but free) based on something conservative (I've gone with XFCE4 & Awesome, for instance) or just give up and buy a Mac, so there's no market. And the free distributions don't really have the resources to seriously maintain DE forks (no, the commendable heroics of Mint don't inspire much confidence in yours truly).

Bottom line is, there appear to be strong socio-economic reasons for platitudes like "the distros are as well free to do what they think is right" to remain just that, empty platitudes. But I guess such rhetoric passes the same rigorous standard as "but the conference-goers love this!" and "that's OK, just find an extension to do what you want!", so all is well.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 14:01 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (4 responses)

> Bottom line is, there appear to be strong socio-economic reasons for platitudes like "the distros are as well free to do what they think is right" to remain just that, empty platitudes

No this is a plain *fact*. Nothing more nothing less. You can twist words all you want but that is how it is.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 14:10 UTC (Mon) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (3 responses)

It is also a plain *fact* that you are free to resign from your job (or quit your studies, more likely), to stop paying rent (if you do) and to go live under a bridge. There's a meaningful difference between possibility and probability, perhaps you should look it up.

(And please kindly show me which words did I "twist" and how exactly).

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 14:31 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (2 responses)

> It is also a plain *fact* that you are free to resign from your job (or quit your studies, more likely), to stop paying rent (if you do) and to go live under a bridge.

Yes that's true. So? I fail to see what your point is.

> There's a meaningful difference between possibility and probability, perhaps you should look it up.

Yes there is but again this has nothing to do with the topic here. Again not sure what your point is.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 14:37 UTC (Mon) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (1 responses)

> Yes that's true. So? I fail to see what your point is.

That's because you are being deliberately obtuse, which is exactly as expected judging from your earlier participation in this so called discussion.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 14:42 UTC (Mon) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link]

> That's because you are being deliberately obtuse, which is exactly as expected judging from your earlier participation in this so called discussion.

I suggest you should take a course or red a book about how to argue with people because seriously your attitude leaves a lot to be desired.

Anyway that's pointless so I am done talking to you.

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 15:13 UTC (Mon) by niner (guest, #26151) [Link] (1 responses)

> (i.e. CATD-free, i.e. not Gnome- or KDE-based)

Cooperative Association of Tractor Dealers?

Enough

Posted Feb 20, 2012 15:17 UTC (Mon) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link]

Sorry, typo. I meant this.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 10:49 UTC (Sun) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (10 responses)

> There is no such thing. We had this discussion in the other gnome3 article
> nobody that was talking about "power user" could describe what a "power
> user" is other than a buzz word being used to say "I am special".

Now that's a nice variant on the "I won't listen to you" attitude: I guess you mean that all the people complaining just have big, inflated egos (possibly suffering from "irrational hatred", as well) and nobody should be listening to their whining. And all of this has been ascertained beyond doubt "in the other gnome3 article". Yeah, sure.

What you don't understand is that the whole Unity/GS debacle has created a disconnect between the dev community and quite a part of the user community, and it's not a surprise that they are the "power users" ("inflated ego whiners" for you) who've been loving and using and spreading Gnome for a long time. The sooner you guys will put down such arrogant attitudes and exit the denial mode you're bathing in, the better for all of us: I've not given up on the idea of running GS some day (although I must say I'm reasonably happy with Cinnamon right today).

Rehdon

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 10:59 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (9 responses)

> Now that's a nice variant on the "I won't listen to you" attitude:

That's not what I said please don't put words in my mouth.

> I guess you mean that all the people complaining just have big, inflated egos (possibly suffering from "irrational hatred", as well) and nobody should be listening to their whining.

No I am just saying that "power user" does not describe any specific use case(s) to me. "I am a programmer." "I am a graphics designer." "I am using my computer do x, y and z." All of them describe a particular type of a user. Which you can design software for. But what is a "power user" ? I don't know there does not seem to be any conses in what that is. Hence it is meaningless.

As for the other article here you go: http://lwn.net/Articles/480887/ and http://lwn.net/Articles/480991/

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 11:29 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link] (7 responses)

The use case is investing a lot of time in learning about and tweaking a system to their desires, either because they simply enjoy doing that, or to improve later user experience.

The non-power user instead wants to be able to use their computer with minimal initial time investment (and thus minimal learning and minimal configuration), and doesn't mind the inevitably less efficient and less customized user experience he is limited to due to that.

For example, a power user will tend to purchase a new computer by researching and separately ordering each component, and often assembling it himself, while the non-power user will just quickly choose a pre-assembled machine from the site of a major oEM.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 13:23 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (6 responses)

> The use case is investing a lot of time in learning about and tweaking a system to their desires, either because they simply enjoy doing that, or to improve later user experience.

OK, so how does the extension system does not fit that use case? It provides a level of customization no other desktop ever provided. It allows editing everything the UI, the behavior of the UI, add new UI elements ... in 3.4 we now support sub classing gobjects / implementing them in JS which mean extensions can even do more stuff. The have almost the complete control of the UI.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 19:27 UTC (Sun) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (5 responses)

Do you understand that to take advantage of the extension system you have to know how to program in Javascript and/or other languages? If you fail to grasp this simple notion continuing this discussion is pointless.

Rehdon

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 19:38 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Only one person has to know javascript enough to write a extension. Everyone else doesn't have to. In most cases, you already have a extension available to tweak what you want.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 21:26 UTC (Sun) by drago01 (subscriber, #50715) [Link] (3 responses)

> Do you understand that to take advantage of the extension system you have to know how to program in Javascript and/or other languages?

That's simply untrue. You need to learn Javascript in order to write your own extension but you don't need any programming skills to install one (it just two three clicks can't be that hard really).

> and/or other languages

FWIW JS is enough.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 21, 2012 6:31 UTC (Tue) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link] (2 responses)

I meant "take advantage of the extension system" to modify or add configuration options to a Gnome Shell environment, I'm not talking about installing an extension. I guess an advanced user (or power user) would know how to do that. Are you just playing with words?

To sum it up:

- what in Gnome 2.x was available as configuration options to all users as part of the standard environment, now is not there and you have to know about extensions;
- extensions can conflict with each other;
- extensions will have to be re-installed for each Gnome Shell version;
- if you can't find an extension doing what you want, you have to program it yourself.

Now tell me that's not a REGRESSION with respect to what we had before. To gain what? Bling and big buttons? Thanks but no, thanks.

Rehdon

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 21, 2012 10:50 UTC (Tue) by cmm (guest, #81305) [Link] (1 responses)

> extensions will have to be re-installed for each Gnome Shell version

Tell me this is not true! I'm having a hard time keeping my palm off my face as it is!

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 21, 2012 13:25 UTC (Tue) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]

I'm using Linux Mint and had to carefully choose extensions to have a stable system, some of them were only working for a different Gnome 3 version. Support for automatic update will only be available starting from Gnome 3.4 iirc, so if you're patient enough you won't have to re-install updated versions by hand.

Frankly, I switched to Cinnamon and forgot about all that.

Rehdon

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 20, 2012 10:07 UTC (Mon) by niko (guest, #80138) [Link]

>No I am just saying that "power user" does not describe any specific use case(s) to me. "I am a programmer." "I am a graphics designer." "I am using my computer do x, y and z."
>All of them describe a particular type of a user. Which you can design software for. But what is a "power user" ? I don't know there does not seem to be any conses in what that is. Hence it is meaningless.

The point here is that for people upgrading from previous Ubuntu releases (which you might call power users) it is hugely inconvenient to use Unity.

I manage to find out how to run terminal but now in my big screen with lots of windows application menu went to status line. WTF??? And this is not configurable. I found the easy way - removing appmenu indicator packages but is this right way to do such a thing.

After using Unity for a while I do completely understand feeling of cmm.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 19, 2012 11:16 UTC (Sun) by oldtomas (guest, #72579) [Link] (5 responses)

A good interior decorator is constantly bringing their client swatches and samples [...]. But they would never discuss dishwasher placement with the client.

This may be a "good interior decorator" according to Joel (who's this guy, anyway?), but not according to me.

And accordingly, he won't get my business. As won't Joel, Or Gnome. Or Unity.

I don't exist? No, in your world I don't.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 20, 2012 8:54 UTC (Mon) by ovitters (guest, #27950) [Link] (4 responses)

You seriously want to discuss a dishwasher with a decorator?

I dislike such analogies, but that I'd find it terribly odd. I'd like a decorator to focus on what they're good at. Not something boring like which dishwasher. I don't get why you'd talk to a decorator about a dishwasher.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 20, 2012 11:38 UTC (Mon) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (3 responses)

I think he meant that someone forcing this kind of decision on their customers, and worse yet, refusing to hear their complains, makes him a very bad professional indeed.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 21, 2012 14:02 UTC (Tue) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, programming is often all about managing expectations. Customers are like elephants in your china store, architecture-wise: they can demand to change things that completely wreck everything and cause costs to balloon and delays to be missed. So you manage what they *can* want by keeping them suitably happy with nondestructive changes, while making sure that they have no input with the critical parts.

This way customers are happy, you are happy, things get done, and the results are good.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 22, 2012 16:46 UTC (Wed) by knico (guest, #67323) [Link] (1 responses)

Except in the rare case where the customer actually has a good idea.

You see the risk to your carefully crafted system and dismiss the idea without analyzing its potential. This is how your results are good (but not great).

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 23, 2012 10:15 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

Even if the customer's idea is good, if it didn't find its way into the requirements reasonably early then implementing it is likely to cause project-management problems.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 23, 2012 18:48 UTC (Thu) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] (3 responses)

Except that Joel was not talking about the same thing. To quote from a just before your quote:

When politics demands that various nontechnical managers or customers "sign off" on a project, give them several versions of the graphic design to choose from.

We're not talking about getting a PHB to put his stamp of approval on something so you can start working on it, we're talking about feedback from users (who are often, remember, *programmers*, and non non-technical people!)

Want to keep quoting Joel? I know you'll like this bit:

If there's one thing every junior consultant needs to have injected into their head with a heavy duty 2500 RPM DeWalt Drill, it's this: Customers Don't Know What They Want. Stop Expecting Customers to Know What They Want. It's just never going to happen. Get over it.

Ahh, vindication! GNOME users don't know what they want so their complaints are irrelevant anyway. Joel continues:

Instead, assume that you're going to have to build something anyway, and the customer is going to have to like it, but they're going to be a little bit surprised. YOU have to do the research. YOU have to figure out a design that solves the problem that the customer has in a pleasing way.

Oh wait... did you figure out how to solve the user's problems in a pleasing way? Apparently not if, after the software is 'finished', they begin screaming at you that it's not solving their problems.

Joel's often an insightful fellow but using some out of context quotes of his is wrong, especially when they say almost the opposite of what you want them to say.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 23, 2012 20:10 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

We're not talking about getting a PHB to put his stamp of approval on something so you can start working on it, we're talking about feedback from users (who are often, remember, *programmers*, and non non-technical people!)

It basically the same thing. Joel even says so directly in other place:

Every time you provide an option, you're asking the user to make a decision. That means they will have to think about something and decide about it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but, in general, you should always try to minimize the number of decisions that people have to make.

This doesn't mean eliminate all choice. There are enough choices that users will have to make anyway: the way their document will look, the way their web site will behave, or anything else that is integral to the work that the user is doing. In these areas, go crazy: it's great to give people choices: by all means, the more the merrier. And there's another category of choice that people like: the ability to change the visual look of things, without really changing the behavior. Everybody loves WinAmp skins; everybody sets their desktop background to a picture. Since the choice affects the visual look without affecting the way anything functions, and since users are completely free to ignore the choice and get their work done anyway, this is a good use of options.

Oh wait... did you figure out how to solve the user's problems in a pleasing way? Apparently not if, after the software is 'finished', they begin screaming at you that it's not solving their problems.

No objections from me. GNOME people completely blew up a lot of UI decisions (or at least their approach to the introduction of said UI decisions), but that's completely separate question from the question of the amount of configuration allowed.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 23, 2012 20:26 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

There's a big difference between forcing a user to make a decision and allowing the user to make a decision.

I agree that having a desktop environment that put the user through a long Q&A session to have them select the options for their desktop would be a disaster.

but removing the option for the user to change something that bugs them is just as bad.

People can easily ignore options. firefox about:config has hundreds, if not thousands of options (plus there are other things you can tweak in config files), most firefox users aren't even aware that about:config even exists, so those options don't hurt the user.

remember that every plugin/extension is an option, so by allowing them to exist you are creating a huge number of additional 'options' or 'decisions' for the user, probably far more options (and harder decisions) than if the features were included to begin with.

Provide the best defaults that you can, but provide the options to allow people to override the defaults.

Even better, if you can gather information about what defaults get overriden frequently, look into what is getting changed and why, and either make it easier to change that sort of thing, figure a way to guess the right setting for a user, or consider changing your default.

Lea: The Unity design process (and how you can play a part in it)

Posted Feb 28, 2012 15:06 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

I still cannot agree that Joel is saying what you think he's saying

Every time you provide an option, you're asking the user to make a decision. That means they will have to think about something and decide about it. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but, in general, you should always try to minimize the number of decisions that people have to make.

Note my emphasis. In cases where the user has to make a decision, he's right. In cases where you ask the user to make a decision, he's right. Here we have a case where the user is asking to make a decision.

[snip]but that's completely separate question from the question of the amount of configuration allowed.

As GNOME3 fans will tell you, absolutely any configuration is allowed (via extensions). The question is what level of customization to support by the inclusion of knobs and how easy it is to find those knobs. I say more knobs is better, and put them somewhere a curious and determined user will be able to discover them. If they'd done that the UI decisions may not have been so hard to cope with.