[Usability] User centered redesign of desktop preferences

[Maarten <m menheere gmx net>]

The control-center needs a bit of a rethink. Desktop-preferences or the
control-center applets are designed from an application viewpoint. This
is understandable because this is the foundation upon which the desktop
is built. However this is not the optimal way IMHO to design a GUI. The
interface should be designed from a users point of view. Doing this I
came up with a few preferences that were a bit different from how they
are now. Anyway I would like a bit of experimentation on this aspect of
the desktop. Here is my go of it.

I used the following points as guidance.
- The user!
- Make themes conform to user needs. 
- Conform to users mental model of the computer (guesswork :))
- Be a little more aggressive in removing superfluous options. 
- Remove preferences that can be placed in applications 
- New system services such as Evolution data server, Hal and D-bus.

Made a small demo
http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/pictures/Desktop-preferences.html

My first go at a user preferences applet. Goals:
- Central place for user information 
- User only enters information desktop can not figure out on itself. 

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/pictures/personal-info-applet.jpg

User themes
As it is now in Gnome Themes are just a bit of a gimmick. Mostly it is
eye-candy except for high contrast like themes. Those themes give a big
pointer for the possibilities of themes. Themes could become more global
in a way that they can describe the whole desktop experience. The
requirements of a male office worker are totally different form a 9 year
old girl, themes could be the perfect solution for this. As an added
bonus, you can now incorporate accessibility into a theme, thus allowing
it to be removed from the desktop-preference list, hooray :). This is
going very well [pads self on back] :)

Computer folder
A lot of the desktop preferences can be removed by allowing a user to
access them via the computer folder. The computer folder contains the
devices the user can see physically connected (real) to the computer.
Cd-roms are "a bit of a weird duck in tha bite" (Dutch) as not the
cd-rom drives themselves are shown but the media itself. This is because
of the user sees a cd-rom drive as a whole with the computer case and
thus should not be show separate.

Upon disconnection devices could be shown with a gray mask. This allows
changing of preferences even when device is disconnected.

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/pictures/computerfolder.png

Outside folder
This is a folder comparable to the computer folder only than for
communcation services.  All services that are not local to the computer
can be put here. Or the "anything that can not be physically pulled out
from a socket in the computer" folder. Maybe you could store your
IM-accounts here to

http://home.wanadoo.nl/sbm/pictures/Outside.png


---
Maarten Menheere