GNOME design principles: It's not that they're disliked by critics, it's that there are missing principles

[Rob Walker <robwalker01 gmail com>]

Although I do appreciate many of the enhancements to GNOME 3, I believe 
there are a few grievous mistakes that seem to be due to missing 
principles in the Design Principles list. Here is a principle that is essential that I believe the current Design Principles is lacking:

Stated several ways along similar themes (take them as a whole, not individually):

1. "Forcing revolutionary interfaces on users is not as good as being able to use old and new in tandem."
2  "Two words: READILY ACCESSIBLE"
   
"Don't make the user have to remember."
   
"Don't assume the user has expertise and prior knowledge."
   
"A good UI makes it easy for the user to educate herself/himself to make future work easier, but without requring users to remember that education in order to work."

Current design choices:

1. The press releases and literature portray categorization of 
applications as a burden because the user has to "remember" the 
categories an application belongs to.
2. The most readily available way to find applications is to use the Search.

These design choices can be criticized in light of these counter-points:

1. Search requires to have prior knowledge of names. If you're a new user, you have NO IDEA what the names of apps are. If you are exploring a new system, categorized apps helped you learn what to use. Allow people to work faster with search if they already know names, but don't require it or APPEAR to require it.
2. Let's say that Search allows you to search by category rather than app name (which is a valid strategy).
    A. It is not obvious to a new user that you can do this.
    B. You're back to remembering categories again, which the current principles wanted to avoid.
    C. Yes, this can be improved by allowing apps to be in more than one category.
    D. **Could we perhaps support an optional tag-cloud feature where users can tag apps with categories that can be shared with other users?** Let the users be the experts of usability.
3. How do you avoid having to remember categories? Make the categories READILY ACCESIBLE. The best way to do this is to retain the feature of categorized apps just as users have always expected with a semi-traditional version of a "start menu" or similar, but don't require it. In other words, the new design choices SHOULD NOT be mutually exclusive with the old.
4. Prior research papers on user interfaces and usability studies still have yet to yield interfaces that don't frustrate a great deal of users. They should be consulted, but with heavy skepticism and counter-research by consulting your grandmother how well she understands the UI. :)