Settings and shutdown in the user menu [Was: Somes personal opinions, ideas and questions]

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

I've renamed the message subject. It would be great if we could try and
stick to informatively named, subject-specific threads (not always easy,
I know). It makes information retrieval so much easier.

> > To finish this mail, I dont understand the logic to put system settings
> > and system shutdow behind the user name (on the right of the top panel).
> > I think this user name must manage only what is relevant to the user,
> > like the "presence" (available, away, etc), change user, deconnect user,
> > etc and system (settings, shutdown and info) need his own button. (icon
> > and/or text (The Gnome logo?)).
> > 
> > What do you think?
> 
> I kind of like this idea. The user name is really not a good place for
> shutdown and there is a lot of space on the top bar anyway so that
> another menu with an appropriate icon shouldn't really harm that much.

There's a logic to this reasoning. That said...

I recently did some user testing on the shell (I *really* need to get
around to blogging about that!), and one of the things I tested was
users' ability to find both system settings and shutdown.

What I found out:

 * All the users successfully found shutdown in the user menu (many of
them immediately, some after a little scout around).

 * All testers tried to access system settings from the application
picker rather than the user menu.

So, these limited tests (6 users, 20-30 minutes testing each) do support
the presence of shutdown in the user menu. Though they maybe question
the presence of system settings there, I don't think it should
necessarily be removed. It doesn't do a huge amount of harm and it does
make some conceptual sense, since some system settings are specific to
the user, their account details in particular. I might have got
different results had I asked my participants to change their password,
for instance.

Best,

Allan
-- 
Blog: http://afaikblog.wordpress.com/
IRC: aday on irc.gnome.org