[Ayatana] Visualizing Fitts's Law

[Thorsten Wilms]

Hi!

Thrown around so often one might develop allergic reactions to it, there 
seems to be some confusion about what Fitts's law is about.


Many seem to associate it with the the fast to hit edges and corners of 
the screen thing. The origin of this popular ideas is likely

http://www.asktog.com/columns/022DesignedToGiveFitts.html

The most enlightening article about it that I'm aware of is "Visualizing 
Fitts's Law:

http://particletree.com/features/visualizing-fittss-law/

Please read it, if you have the slightest doubt about the implications 
of Fitts's Law.



--
Thorsten Wilms

thorwil's design for free software:
http://thorwil.wordpress.com/

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[Ayatana] Community Proposed Unity Design Document

[Arian van Gend]

Hello every one,

After using Ubuntu for a few years now, I've developed more and more
interest in the design decisions that are made by the wonderful design team
on the one hand, and the community input on the other. It seems hard
sometimes to reach across the schism that at times seems to exist between
these two groups. Lots of work is being done in this area of course,
including the Ubuntu design blog, and the increasing acceptance of community
code into the project (such as the launcher resizing code, and the freshly
started power user group). These are great efforts by all involved, and they
truly make Ubuntu better and better.

Still, it would seem prudent to increase the ease of the communication,
especially for the designers, who undoubtedly do not have the time to read
every single item on this mailing list, every forum and/or blog post for
great ideas, especially if they are not detailed, or polished enough.

Therefore I've created a Google Doc for now with the working title
'Community Proposed Unity Design Document'. It can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13d-82URPS09y7KU2JntbvT_JkFXYxccNKFWOUj0Mhdw/edit?hl=en_GB&authkey=CPXZ690J

For now, do not expect to find too much there. I've started with a rough
document outline and an initial fleshing out of the text with design ideas
of my own, that need to be polished and tested for validity against the
guidelines of the document.

The aim of the document is to accumulate the best community design ideas and
unify them into one stream-lined document, that in time can become the
unified communication point between Unity designers and the community. The
document should take into account the current state of Unity design, the
usability testing performed on it, and the publicized design philosophy of
the Unity design team on the one hand, and the input from the community, be
it this mailing list, a blog post, or forum post, on the other. The
community should write this document, and at times receive feedback from the
designers to keep things on track.

My hope is that this way, we can receive more easy feedback from Unity
designers, without weighing them down with too much work, and have more
community involvement on the other hand, that is polished enough for
consideration, and in line with the Unity design philosophy.

What do you think of this idea? For now, the Google Doc can only be viewed,
because I feel it isn't productive to have too many people working on it
directly. If any one feels inclined to help me out in writing the document,
I would certainly welcome it! Maybe, with a handful of motivated editors,
the document can grow quickly, and with proper unity. :)

Sincerely,
Arian van Gend
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Re: [Ayatana] Thoughts on Unity design

[Ed Lin]

On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Ralph Green  wrote:
>  If this is some kind of principle that guides the decision to use
> the global menu, then it is time to change.  I am quite experienced
> with the mouse and how to use it.  I use as much acceleration as is
> reasonable.  It would not be an improvement to have the mouse go
> twitching away out of control, which is what happens if I speed it up
> more than it is now.  So, the distance is not irrelevant.  If Fitt's
> Law is considered important, how can the distance be irrelevant?  It
> is one of the variables that most drives the result.  If you ignore
> distance, you are not using Fitt's Law, but rather an arbitrary
> derivation of it.

I claim no expertise in Fitts's Law or mathematics but I'll try...

Because one part of the equation becomes infinity the distance can be
ignored (distance/∞). On very large screen it's likely faster to
access a target not only directly under the pointer but very close to
it than one at a screen edge, not only because of mouse (and
arm/wrist!) acceleration but because you first need to "find" your
target with your eyes which it's outside your field of vision. A
corner will still be faster to access because you don't have to
search, focus and correct at all. This however assumes that you really
want to activate your arm and quickly move the mouse. So besides
Fitts's Law ignoring field of vision it also ignores our human
laziness...

I'd also argue that while mathematically sound (at first glance)
literally putting in infinity doesn't give you a realistic result,
think divided by zero which can break an otherwise perfectly usable
formula. Put in a ridiculously large "D" and with infinitive "W" you'd
get exactly the same result (you'd calculate with zero) which doesn't
take in account b, the inherent speed of the pointer. Clearly the law
fails here. Just see the derivation: natural number =∞/2 ??  Someone
with a bit more math background, please chime in.

>  Concerning my query about Fitt's Law, I note this quote from wikipedia:
>  "It applies only to movement in a single dimension and not to
> movement in two dimensions (though it is successfully extended to two
> dimensions in the Accot-Zhai steering law);"

 Mouse movement is one-dimensional, approximately because you don't
move the pointer in a perfectly straight line. But this is taken into
account as noted.



On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Ralph Green  wrote:

>  I spend most of my time running
> virtual machines or vnc sessions to machines on my network.  The edge
> of their screens is somewhere in the middle of the screen on my host
> machine.  So, global menus may hurt me much more than a typical user.
>  I do this even on an isolated machine.  I like the ability to
> checkpoint the filesystem on the virtual machines and isolate any
> errors to a VM that I can replace or roll back.
>   I am guessing the average user does not do this as much.  I setup
> client machines this way fairly often, but I don't remember running
> across anyone else who did it on their own.

ssh and automation with scripts ;)
But really, this is nothing the designers of Unity should or could
take care of. I'd put that into the hands of the devs of your favorite
VM and remote desktop solutions.

You know you can also trap your mouse in a window or run another
system on a separate virtual desktop?

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Re: [Ayatana] Launcher Icon for Compiz Scale Plugin

[Ed Lin]

On Sat, May 21, 2011 at 12:40 AM, Niklas Rosenqvist
 wrote:
> 2011/5/20 Ed Lin 
>> alternatively:
>> keep the current button design of the workspace switcher and extend it
>> so you can add and remove certain special buttons such as the spread
>> view or "show desktop" via a yet to be written launcher option dialog.
>
> For me this is partially not an alternative. The extension idea is great but
> the button design must be revamped since it's a function integrated so
> deeply into the shell and not "just" a launcher and therefore it must be
> separated from the regular launchers. I have an idea for this I will sketch
> up a mockup for in the near future. I understand that by "design" you may
> very well have meant purely the function and not the aesthetics but I just
> wanted to emphasize this :)

I always was for separating app launchers and other buttons more
cleanly. My solution for that was to start putting app launcher from
the top, below the BFB and lenses, workspace switcher and possible
additions to that from the bottom, above the trash. Also I should be
able to remove ALL launcher items individually. Personally I prefer a
minimalist look and I'd like to use the launcher only for displaying
running applications, nothing more. For other functions I prefer using
keyboard shortcuts, gnome-do and opening the trash via nautilus.

> The launcher context menu is a great idea but please explain the hot corners
> further since I'm not an avid OS X user.

Or like the Activities button in GNOME 3. throw the mouse in the
corner and activate the view. In OS X  you can set any of the four
corners to show desktop/workspaces/expose/screensaver...

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Re: [Ayatana] Thoughts on Unity design

[David Regev]

The equation doesn’t break down here because you’re not supposed to put in
∞. Although the edge may theoretically be infinitely long, it’s not in
practice. Any human being aiming at the edge will stop within a certain
distance past the edge. That means that, effectively, *W* is a certain fixed
quantity, which can be determined through testing and seeing how far users
actually travel past the edge. Jef
Raskin,
for example, found that *W* was 50 mm for the Macintosh. Using these
methods, Fitts’ Law will get you more accurate results. You can also figure
out how great *D* must be for global menus not to be faster any more (hint:
probably much 
largerthan
your typical large monitor).


On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 16:53, Ed Lin  wrote:

> I'd also argue that while mathematically sound (at first glance) literally
> putting in infinity doesn't give you a realistic result, think divided by
> zero which can break an otherwise perfectly usable formula. Put in a
> ridiculously large "D" and with infinitive "W" you'd get exactly the same
> result (you'd calculate with zero) which doesn't take in account b, the
> inherent speed of the pointer. Clearly the law fails here. Just see the
> derivation: natural number =∞/2 ??  Someone with a bit more math background,
> please chime in.
>
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Re: [Ayatana] Thoughts on Unity design

[Ralph Green]

On 5/22/11, Ed Lin  wrote:
> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 6:02 AM, Ralph Green  wrote:
>>  If this is some kind of principle that guides the decision to use
>> the global menu, then it is time to change.  I am quite experienced
>> with the mouse and how to use it.  I use as much acceleration as is
>> reasonable.  It would not be an improvement to have the mouse go
>> twitching away out of control, which is what happens if I speed it up
>> more than it is now.  So, the distance is not irrelevant.  If Fitt's
>> Law is considered important, how can the distance be irrelevant?  It
>> is one of the variables that most drives the result.  If you ignore
>> distance, you are not using Fitt's Law, but rather an arbitrary
>> derivation of it.
>
> I claim no expertise in Fitts's Law or mathematics but I'll try...
>
> Because one part of the equation becomes infinity the distance can be
> ignored (distance/∞). On very large screen it's likely faster to
  This was the mistake I expected the people who push for a global
menu would have made.  There is a case when a larger value for the
target makes some sense.  But, it should not be much larger.  I show
in my own case how there is no additional value which should be
applied to the edge of the screen.  A system should optimize for it's
most frequent case, but good design also be usable in less frequent
cases.  Lots of people use VMs and vnc to remote computers.  I may do
it more than most, but I am certainly not unique.
  If you use the value of about 2 inches that Jef Raskin supposedly
suggested, then the additional distance I have to travel to get to a
global menu is significant.

>
>
> On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 7:28 AM, Ralph Green  wrote:
>
>>  I spend most of my time running
>> virtual machines or vnc sessions to machines on my network.  The edge
>> of their screens is somewhere in the middle of the screen on my host
>> machine.  So, global menus may hurt me much more than a typical user.
>>  I do this even on an isolated machine.  I like the ability to
>> checkpoint the filesystem on the virtual machines and isolate any
>> errors to a VM that I can replace or roll back.
>>   I am guessing the average user does not do this as much.  I setup
>> client machines this way fairly often, but I don't remember running
>> across anyone else who did it on their own.
>
> ssh and automation with scripts ;)
> But really, this is nothing the designers of Unity should or could
> take care of. I'd put that into the hands of the devs of your favorite
> VM and remote desktop solutions.
 ssh and scripts are not useful for most of my use.  I use them
already when appropriate.  As just one example, I vnc to one computer
where I run VLC to play podcasts and run bittorrents of Linux isos
with transmission.  VNC is the best way to do that.
 Another virtual machine runs Miro and is the closest thing I have to
a TV.  ssh and scripts would not do anything for me there.
  Unity 2d may be usable on those machines and I'll try it when it is
ready.  If it uses global menus, there is virtually no chance I will
do more than a small test.
  Most of my usage is testing programs that run on a gui.  I build
clean virtual machines for the test and connect to them with vnc.
Scripts and ssh are useless for what I do.
 The Unity devs should be cognizant of how a Linux desktop is used.
Their design should be one that does not drive away users just because
they are not the dominant case.  One reason I can do a good job at
local Linux outreach events answering questions about doing stuff in
Linux and Ubuntu is that I use it so much.  I am not convinced that
driving away users like myself benefits Ubuntu.  That is why I am
engaging in this conversation.  I think Ubuntu is worth the effort.

>
> You know you can also trap your mouse in a window or run another
> system on a separate virtual desktop?
  Yes, and it is always annoying when I accidentally trap the mouse
like that.  I often use several virtual desktop windows.  Running in
another virtual window would not help unless I ran it full screen
there and I practically never run in what I call moron mode.

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