Re: [Usability] New UI for gnome-about-me capplet

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On May 1, 2006, at 8:15 AM, Diego González wrote:
> ...
> i'm the maintainer of the gnome-about-me capplet that is in the  
> control center, i'm thinking about redoing the UI for the new release  
> of gnome.

Thanks for asking for design help.

First, can I make an unreasonable but hopeful request? Please, please,  
please merge gnome-about-me with the Users & Groups control panel! To  
have one graphical tool for changing your own account, and another  
graphical tool for changing your account *and* other peoples' accounts,  
is mind-boggling. Windows XP and Mac OS X have each been using a  
combined tool for these tasks for over five years now, regardless of  
what account privileges you have. I would be delighted to help design a  
combined tool that would be easier to use than either of them.

Meanwhile...

> Currently i have thought about something like the screenshot attached.

Suggestions:
*   "Personal" what? "About Me" isn't a noun, so "Personal" doesn't
    seem to be referring to anything. Perhaps you mean "Personal
    Details"?
*   "Home Page"? Epiphany's Preferences dialog already has a field for
    that.
*   The "Job" group should begin with a one-sentence description of
    where other non-admins will be able to see this information. If the
    answer is "nowhere", these fields should be dropped.
*   "Change password" should be "Change Password…".
*   "Address book card" should be "Address Book Card…".

> Clicking on the picture of the first screenshort would show a file
> selector in the $prefix/share/pixmap/faces directory.

Last I checked, the GTK+ file selector was chock-full of stuff that  
wasn't about choosing pictures. It didn't even show all the pictures in  
a directory at once, and if it did, they'd be tiny.

Instead, how about a gallery dialog (or even better, a two-dimensional  
option menu popping up from the current picture) showing decent-sized  
thumbnails of everything in $prefix/share/pixmap/faces? At the bottom,  
have an "Other File…" button for opening a filepicker as a last resort.

> Clicking on the change password would bring the dialog shown in the
> second screenshot.

First, the minor details:
*   The "Change password" title should be "Change Your Password".
*   Remove the padlock icon. This is a dialog, not an alert.
*   Remove the "Change your password" text. It's redundant with the
    window title.
*   "Close" should be "Cancel", and should activate on Escape, not on
    any access key.
*   The "Change password" title should be "Change Password".

However, the biggest problem is that the dialog is very wordy. Your  
screenshot contains 58 words, and after the fixes above, it would still  
contain 56. Fifty-six! Fortunately, that's easily fixed:
1.  Change "Current password:" to "First, enter your current
    password:". (Yes, this is adding three words, but we'll make up for
    that later.)
2.  Change "Authenticate" to "Continue", and make it activate on Enter,
    not on any access key. (Yes, this means there are two buttons
    activated on Enter, but we'll fix that in a moment.)
3.  Until the "Continue" button is activated, all the controls in the
    dialog should be unavailable, except for (a) the "First, enter your
    current password:" field, (b) the "Continue" button, and (c) the
    "Cancel" button.
4.  Once the "Continue" button is activated and you're successfully
    authenticated, the "First, enter your current password:" field and
    the "Continue" button should become unavailable, and every other
    control should become available. (That solves the two-Enter-buttons
    problem: only one of them is available at any time.)
5.  Change "New password:" to "Now, choose a new password:". (Yes, more
    words, but hang in there...)
6.  Change "Retype new password:" to "Enter your new password again:".
7.  Delete the paragraph at the beginning of the dialog. (Huzzah!)
8.  Delete the sentence at the end of the dialog.

So when the dialog opens, you get:
 ________________________________________________________
|::::::::::::::::: Change Your Password :::::::::::::::::|
|                                      ________________  |
| First, enter your current password: [________________] |
|                                     (( Continue ))     |
|                                                        |
|         :.., .:.... . ... ,.......: :"""""""""""""""": |
|                                      """"""""""""""""  |
|      :.... ,... ... ,....... .,...: :"""""""""""""""": |
|                                      """"""""""""""""  |
|                       ( Cancel ) (( :...,. :......: )) |
|________________________________________________________|

And once you've authenticated, you get:
 ________________________________________________________
|::::::::::::::::: Change Your Password :::::::::::::::::|
|                                                        |
| :...., ..:.. ,... ......: ,.......: :"""""""""""""""": |
|                                     (( :..:.... ))     |
|                                      ________________  |
|         Now, choose a new password: [________________] |
|                                      ________________  |
|      Enter your new password again: [________________] |
|                                                        |
|                       ( Cancel ) (( Change Password )) |
|________________________________________________________|

From 58 words down to 22. Not too shabby.

However, I'm extremely skeptical about your statement that "the Linux  
way to change a password is a pain in the ass ... this is usually a two  
step process and cannot be simplified further". Why don't you allow  
entry of the old and new passwords before you try authenticating the  
old one? Then when I click "Change Password":
1.  try authenticating with the old password
    -   if it didn't work, return focus to the current-password field
        and print an error underneath it
2.  if it worked, try changing the password
    -   if that didn't work, return focus to the first new-password
        field, and print the error underneath it
3.  if both of those worked, *then* close the dialog.

If that's possible (and I can't imagine why it wouldn't be), so people  
don't need to enter things in a particular order, we could get even  
more concise:
 __________________________________________________
|:::::::::::::: Change Your Password ::::::::::::::|
|                                ________________  |
|  Enter your current password: [________________] |
|                                                  |
|                                ________________  |
|        Choose a new password: [________________] |
|                                ________________  |
| Enter the new password again: [________________] |
|                                                  |
|                 ( Cancel ) (( Change Password )) |
|__________________________________________________|

Down to 19 words, even better.

If you have time for all that and you want to get even more  
sophisticated, you could adapt the non-intrusive error feedback and  
password hints I specified for the "Name and password" section of the  
Ubuntu Installer.  
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuExpress/GnomeUserInterface#head 
-8a3a02f3e65020cd3194ab8f5f2d8f35b6b4d211>

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/