Re: [Usability] Reviewing users-admin's new UI

[Philip Ganchev <phil ganchev gmail com>]

On Wed, Dec 2, 2009 at 4:00 PM, Milan Bouchet-Valat <nalimilan club fr> wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> So I've finally managed to merge the new GUI of users-admin (from the
> gnome-system-tools) to master, and it should be included in GNOME
> 2.29.3. That's basically a complete reorganization of the different
> settings one can tweak about user accounts, plus a few nice features
> that make up something (I think) really easier to use. The design comes
> from a proposal by Matthias Clasen and William Jon McCann for Fedora
> [1], adapted to what users-admin is able to do ATM (more features will
> hopefully come later).
[...]

Thanks for your work! I am not familiar with the rationale for the
design. There is already a good "Users Settings" dialog in Ubuntu
(maybe also other distros);[1] why not use of modify that, instead of
redesigning it completely? Its child "Account Properties" dialog has
the advantage that it has tabs (Account, Contact, User Privileges, and
Advanced), which are a standard UI component.

As near as I can see, the new design does not allow a way to set phone
numbers, specific user privileges (monitor system logs, connect to the
Internet using a modem, etc.), the home directory, or the login shell.

Also, it would be better to avoid the additional dialog boxes for
setting the name, account type, email address, language, location, and
(maybe) the password. I know this is more work to program, but it
would be clearer and less manual work for the user. The dialog window
could use combo boxes and text fields like this:

         Real name: [ Orville Redenbacher       ]
          Username: [ orville                   ]
      Account type: [ Standard user (Recommended)  v]
          Password: To be set at next log-in [Change...]
    E-mail address: [ orville gmail com       ]
          Language: [ English (US)  v]
          Location: [ Westford, MA, USA ]
 Parental controls: [ Not enabled  v]


The fields "Real name", "Username" and "Email address" are text
fields, while "Account type", "Language", ("Location"?) and "Parental
controls" are combo boxes that are expanded when clicked, like this:

      Account type: [ Standard user (Recommended)  v]
                    | Administrator                 |
                    | Guest                         |
                    +-------------------------------+

(By the way, "Parental controls" should have the correct letter case.)

Setting the password probably should still be done in an additional
dialog or tab, because it has so many controls. The design document
shows two such dialogs, and I think the first one is unnecessary; use
the second one only.


[1] http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2727/4154047237_2162a489e5_b_d.jpg