Re: [Usability] Deja Dup UI Review

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall gmail com>]

On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 5:49 PM, Michael Terry <mike mterry name> wrote:
> On 21 May 2010 09:39, Allan Day <allanpday gmail com> wrote:
>> Where are we at with this, Michael?
>
> I like a lot of the ideas in the analysis & mockups.  In particular, I
> think a more welcoming first run wizard would be good, and I like your
> mockups for that.  I'm also on board for a main screen with a bit of
> information about one's backup/settings; not sure exactly how that
> would look.  The mockup you made is a good start, but I'd like to do a
> survey of other backup app's opening screens and think about what info
> we need to present.
>
> I'm still leery of tabbed preferences, but it may be unavoidable.
> I'll need to sleep on it more.
>
> I also think I need to come up with some use cases as discussed in
> this thread.  I'll add them to the wiki when I write them.
>
> -mt
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Hi Michael!


I like where the start page is going in the designs. I was thinking it
would be great to know when I ran my last backup, and the mockup is
doing just what I wanted :)

I would like to point out two things that aren't mentioned in the May
2010 analysis wiki page[1]:


The icon for Backup and Restore are dubious. If one is backing up to
an external hard drive, the Restore icon feels like it should mean
Backup. Probably better to just not have these. The Main Window mockup
attached to that analysis[2] does this.


The Restore / Backup wizards probably shouldn't be wizards. It is
unclear whether the current step is, in fact, the last step, which is
really hair-raising when we're dealing with backups. When I use the
Restore function, it is hard to know whether pressing Forward will
suddenly replace all my data with what's in that backup or bring me to
another step. Besides, all these pages make the process slower and
mean that it's impossible to reference selections I had made earlier.
(What happens if I selected the wrong date in the first step?)

There aren't many steps in the current wizards, and each one is
limited to one or two widgets. A fairly tall window (please do put its
contents in a scrolling container!), sticking all those options in one
place, would work a lot better. The user would click “Restore…”, then
all in one window he'd select a date, the place to restore to and the
file to restore, and then finally the big scary button to do the deed.
In that process, every button does an obvious job, so there is no
terror-inducing doubt about what the application will do next.

[1] http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/Design/Review-2010-05/Analysis
[2] http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/Design/Review-2010-05/MainWindow


Good luck!
Dylan