@ Mark Shuttleworth I think what @Pablo QuirĂ³s meant was that the aim of
design and usability is to make the life of the user easier, to improve
their workflow hence their productivity. If the design fails to achieve
this (and only the user can tell) then that design has failed and reason
be restored.

>Yes, design is a democracy in the sense that users vote with their feet
>they choose the products that work well for them. If we fail badly
>with this, or any other piece, they will go somewhere else, and we lose
Are you saying that those who think that the new design of windows button 
placement does not suit them, should take a walk and find another distro? You 
might ask how can we know if users are happy with this design choice  without 
first trying it and see from their feedbacks if it helped make their lives 
easier? True but you really don't want to perform such a test on an LTS  which 
is the version of Ubuntu that is adopted by enterprise users. Even though I 
feel this change is a solution looking for a problem. Still I am not against 
giving it a try in one of the in between LTS releases and using the feedback 
generated as input on whether such a move would benefit the user or not.

>Look, I understand this is risky. In my judgment, it's worth the risk.

 Serious Mark you really think making this risky decisions for an LTS release 
is worth it? seriously? 
>Being able to tackle risky things is one of the things that gives us the
>chance to catch up to the big guys, and beat them.
One way to catch the big boys is ask what their secret is. and one of it is 
consistency. Windows as pretty much maintained the same look since windows 95, 
they just added more polish and more superlatives but its essentially the same 
start-menu, windows management buttons, the same task-manager hence a user 
knows what to expect from a newer version of windows. This is one of the reason 
why windows is very popular many people know what to expect and how to find 
their way around. Even with all its flaws Microsoft or Apple wont wake up one 
morning and decide their were going to change the location of their window 
button placement its just not something you want to do for a serious OS. You 
dont experiment too much with a serious OS. look at redhat or Sled the big 
players in the linux desktop They don't experiment with their users. They try 
to keep things consistent I am not saying Ubuntu should be that conservative or 
enterprise focussed, we can always maintain a balance.. keep the desktop 
consistent and the underthehood stuffs should do the magic design thats and 
design and usability decisions should really improve the usability and workflow 
of users. and not force them to have to relearn how to use their desktop. 
Consistency is the biggest problem of free desktop we always move the post to 
many times.

 Whatever decision the usability team makes the deciding factor is how
the user reacts to its, whether its makes their usage of ubuntu easier
or adds to their problem. You raised the issue of the Kernel team (among
other teams) If they make a radical change to the Ubuntu kernel which
impacts negatively on the user. You would get the same backlash you are
getting now. The reason why people are not poking too much into their
business is because for most they are doing their work fine. Ubuntu and
the development process is (or should be) actually democratic if not in
voting but in checks and balancing. The usability team come up with a
design. If it doesn't work for the user they would receive a backlash
(such as this) hence the community is a check to bring the design team
back down to earth (no pun intended) and to face the reality of everyday
computer usage something which is quite beyond the drawing board. I am
not against taking risk or trying something new. I just feel for an LTS
things should be kept quite conservative.

-- 
[light-theme] please revert the order of the window controls back to 
"menu:minimize,maximize,close"
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/532633
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