The path of least blame

[Akshay Dua <dakshay gmail com>]

I hate that Gnome 3 gets a bad rap for little issues like starting a new terminal instance (http://digitizor.com/2011/08/04/linus-torvalds-ditches-gnome-for-xfce/). I personally love the interface, so seeing everyone get angry over very fixable little faults makes me disappointed. Then, it got me thinking: how can one avoid Gnome 3 users from getting angry?

Thought: If users can't blame Gnome 3, then they won't be frustrated by it. 

Case in point: assume an instance of terminal is already open and the user has forgotten about it. Also, assume that clicking the terminal icon always opens a new instance. Now when the user clicks the terminal icon and a new window pops up, she might see the old instance and go, "oops! I totally forgot I had a terminal already open. silly me!". Furthermore, users that wanted to start a new instance get the expected result. This way, Gnome doesn't get the blame. 

In the current scenario, the set of users that forgot about the existing terminal are happy, but the rest are very unhappy. Raising the existing terminal is a completely unexpected result for those that want to start a new instance. So, they blame Gnome for that result...because they can.

So, my thesis is that in a situation where the common case is not known, or the outcome is hard to predict, software should choose the outcome of least blame to avoid user frustration and eventual alienation.

Just my thoughts,

- Akshay
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~akshay/

Footnote: Users might want the feature to raise existing windows, but they will be understanding of the fact that Gnome cannot possibly know if they wanted to raise the existing window or create a new one. Besides, the activities overview already shows what's open on the desktop so raising the existing window is a patronizing move on Gnome's part.