[Usability] Introduction

[Janne Kaasalainen <janne kaasalainen uiah fi>]

Hello all.

I'm not sure if it is a habit of this list or not, but now that I've  
followed the conversations over here for a week or so, so I decided  
to introduce myself and describe a little why I am here.

I am a student at Helsinki University of Technology, reading  
'Interactive digital media' as my major and doing my second masters  
degree at the same time at University of Art and Design Helsinki.  
I've been keen on 3d animation and vfx stuff, compositing and video  
editing for quite some while and during this spring made my switch to  
Linux. Before that, my background is mostly with Windows and OS X,  
which I ran into at Uiah (www.uiah.fi) and grew to like.

In any case, perhaps it is my personal problem to find things to be  
improved in pretty much everything I meddle with. I was not all that  
happy with window managers on Linux and each seemed to lack  
something. I considered writing my own, then took a bit of an  
evaluation of how much commitment and time it would need and decided  
it would not be for me. Instead, finding Gnome to be most to my  
liking, I decided see if there is anything I could help with. So,  
here I am, to see and try it out if I am of any use.

To give a bit of a feeling of my thinking and such, I wrote somewhat  
of a rant to explain what I would prefer, what I would see wrong with  
various things, not specific to Gnome and some not even specific to  
any operating system. None the less, I now consider that I have  
nothing much to loose to let that out and perhaps it tells more than  
these few paragraphs. It is not to be taken too seriously though, be  
warned. Some things are impossible and out of scope.

-----

User experience: User experience starts when you first hear about the  
system, but for the sake of simplicity, let's start from the pressing  
if the power button. Why, why are we greeted with a strange black  
screen with odd information on it and some statistics? Why do we need  
to see SCSI card scanning through device IDs? Why can't we just have  
an area of memory that contains an image to be shown all the way till  
the OS takes control of what to display? An area of memory that would  
be separated from BIOS not to allow the computer to crash. With an  
option to show the POST details, as if often needed when installing a  
new system.

Speaking of boot loader, the consistency should continue all the way.  
Get into VGA modes as soon as possible to present it with less  
restrictions. Some icons to select which OS to load if there are  
multiple options, some possibilities to customize this to suit the  
mood of the OS. If there were no options, just boot the only one that  
exists. Again, if more is needed, use keyboard shortcuts, for example  
control-o for options menu.

When OS loads, the same color theme and visual style should continue,  
if possible so that the user does not much even notice when the  
display driver kicks in (no NVIDIA logo, that is just tasteless). No  
need to show how daemons or processes are being started and how some  
of them FAIL with a red color to show the user that something might  
be wrong when it is perfectly normal in their configuration. I was  
quite surprised that even Ubuntu does this.

Only then we get into the area of logging in and using Gnome or what  
ever window manager there might be.

Consistency throughout the system. Something that Gnome alone is  
unlikely to have much to say about, but is something that really  
seems to lack in Linux. Every this and that program works a bit  
differently, complies with different HIGs or with nothing at all.  
Even more so, they even look different, what was a combo-box in one,  
may be um-comprehensible thing on the next one. To clarify, Ctrl-C  
should copy in each program when it is appropriate in all programs.  
Radio-buttons should look the same within the same environment,  
unless there is a specific reason not to do that (be that artistic,  
design issue, whatever).

Use Windows-key; most new keyboards have it and it is somewhat  
presentational to window management. Besides, I do not think it is  
much used for anything else, so overlapping with application  
shortcuts, such as control-c & control-v, would be less of a problem.  
If windows key does not exist, there can always be an option to  
configure it to be for example alt & ctrl together. Most if not all  
new systems do have the key, even some religious people still rip it  
off from their keyboards.

Using keyboard and the mouse: I am very sure it is no news that  
moving your hand between keyboard and the mouse is bound to get  
difficult and slow really quick. Keyboard and mouse do work together,  
assuming that can use both with a single hand. Emphasis should be  
placed to the shortcuts that would be easy to use with a single hand.  
For example, closing an application with Alt-F4 means some very  
trickery hand movements. Why can't it be, say Windows-Q for quitting?  
Not a big problem alone, but merely a demonstration what I mean.

Another matter is to make it fast to do searches for programs and  
quickly run terminal commands. On OS X, you have an utility called  
QuickSilver, which is un-intrusive (can be set non-visible in any  
menus/docks) and is quickly to awake. Running text edit would require  
me; CTRL-TAB, T, E and enter. It is not part of the OS though and  
needs tweaking (hear about it, find it, installing it, possibly  
configure it and run it) to be usable in any form.

Drag and drop: I have a Firefox open and am browsing for images that  
I wish to include into my seminar paper to be used as an example. I  
have the paper open, I've just written a chapter that needs that  
image. I found a suitable one, I click and start to drag it from  
Firefox to the OpenOffice document... A thing to worry about though,  
I tried KDE on Suse 9.2 some while back, dragged a file from the  
Konqueror to the desktop, the simplest thing to do. And I get a pop- 
up menu, do you wish to move the file or copy it. Great, just imagine  
how annoying that is after a couple of times.

Desktop: I really liked the simplicity of WindowMaker to some extent,  
but the lack of desctop and fitting file browser is making my life  
hard with it. A lot can be done with terminal and command line. <- My  
point exactly. But, consider that I am browsing the web for no  
reason, finding a quote that I would like to save. But for some  
reason I don't wish to launch up OpenOffice, since I was not really  
looking for quotes anyway, so it can wait. Now, I select the text and  
drag it to the Desktop to be saved into a text file.

Opening text files with Nautilus: Why does it not open to a text  
editing program straight away? I may just want to view it, but if I  
notice a spelling error, I need to do some hassle to have it open in  
suitable program. The problem is even more evident with images, some  
I wish to open in Gimp, some in Cinepaint but neither of those are in  
the right click menu by default. What if I would wish to open it in  
yet another program?

I really see no point of having large applications menus like Windows  
and Suse, it is not up-to-date anyway, it is bloated and I have no  
frigging idea how to easily control it. Also, some programs don't  
install themselves into those by default. Why can't applications  
reside in a single folder / directory?

Speaking of application installation - Next-/OpenStep model for  
packaging applications that is now used in OS X is much, much more  
practical than Windows installers or RPMs. Of course, that needs  
support from the underlying system and libraries, but that is just  
why I consider consolidation of systems a good thing.

Prettiness: Some people are rather utilitarian, and while there is  
nothing wrong with that, a system could look other than grey  
rectangular boxes without loosing the usability aspects. Of course,  
that is in the eye of the beholder, but there could be something done  
to the default theme. To continue further:

Seeking a pretty theme often leads to the use of large images. I am  
not sure about the rest of the people out there, but I have hardly  
used any display besides the laptops, with anything less than  
1600x1200 resolution and even then much of the screen estate seems to  
be drowning to window borders, menu bars, docks and to what ever. I  
can only imagine what it is like on a smaller display. KDE is a good  
nice example of a ridiculously large panel at the bottom by default.  
Much can be tweaked, but there is humongous amount of tweaking ahead  
of you if you go that route. I do not have 21" or 23" screens just  
because they are cool, I would actually wish to use them for my work.

Open/Save menus: Many, many applications on Linux seem to show  
directories and files starting with . when you try to browse with the  
open/save dialog. Why, of why is that? Can't we conclude that  
manipulating those files would be a thing a casual user would rarely  
need to be doing in the first place? On general level, it feels that  
a user needs to do an awful lot of things outside his home directory,  
whether that is to find a file, external hard drive, what ever. On  
windows, why, why do you need to go to your external usb stick / hard  
drive, through my computer? Why do I need to visit Program Files so  
often to remove the craps from there? Why do I need to know a  
directory /Windows even exists? (or /System, /bin, whatever).

Top of that, attaching the save dialogs to the documents you are  
saving in OS X is not that bad idea at all; the implementation is  
annoying on OS X as it hides the top of the document and quite  
possibly a lot of information you would need to name the file.

Staying out of your way: Now, I have been doing pixel by pixel image- 
editing in Photoshop/Gimp for some hours, I've had a long brush  
stroke that I have been doing tediously and am just about to finish  
it. Windows decides to inform me that new updates are available,  
popping up a menu that takes my focus off the image I was editing.  
Click okay, the downloads arrive and you keep on working. Next, every  
15 minutes you get a new pop-up that asks you to restart the system,  
if you don't react, it makes a restart automatically.

Handling multiple documents and windows: Common way seems to be to  
handle running applications in a panel at the top or bottom of your  
window. Some programs launch multiple windows, each of them having a  
vertical text that describes what they are (if we are lucky, that  
is). Problem is, that you can't really position those to anywhere but  
on the top or bottom since if you wish to keep the text readable, you  
need to have it quite wide. That in turn needs a lot of screen  
estate. And even still you run into problems really, really quick  
where to find the window you are looking for among all the possible  
ones.

Using corners: It is somewhat easier to just slam the pointer device  
to the edge of the screens, not caring if you aim exactly where it is  
supposed to be. In OS X, I would be really, really glad if I could  
position my trash can to such a corner, but no, there remains a few  
pixels that just make it impossible. Same goes with apple menu, even  
if that one does not even pretend to be exactly in the corner. Why?  
Expose is user configurable, and the situation would not be much  
different if the apple menu would have active area all the way to the  
left edge of the screen. If you wanted expose to be activated there,  
it would be your choice. Besides, the menu would need clicking to be  
activated anyway, so the functionality of these would hardly overlap  
that much.

----

PS. Last things going through my mind has been a bit of a turn; How  
much everybody hates a single button mouse, I've started to think  
that as a good ground to design interfaces for computer. Not because  
it would be better as mouse, but because it is very close how one  
would operate a tablet, something I would like to see as a way to  
interact with the computers.

And my apologies if I spoil the day for anybody by spamming you.


- Janne Kaasalainen
janne.kaasalainen (a t) uiah.fi
jpkaasal (a t) cc.hut.fi