On 04/03/12 22:17, Hans Heintze wrote:
On 03/04/2012 03:41 PM, Edward Mountjoy wrote:
The rationale:
Unity's launcher is designed to act both as a launcher AND a window
switcher. The current implementation of the 'launcher' works well as
a launcher but requires much more thought from the user when it comes
to switching windows. This (for me at least) is Unity's biggest
stumbling block when it comes to multi-tasking.
The problem is that it is difficult for the user to, at a glance,
distinguish between running and favourite apps as they are often
dispersed amongst each other. It is not immediately clear which apps
are running. This means that when switching windows the user must
first search through the list of (many) apps to see which are
running, then can think which one was it that they wanted to switch to.
Inconsistency. this creates more problems than it solves IMO.
[snip]
The real problem here is that it is that the visual indicator is not
obvious enough, Canonical's own usability testing has shown this. IMO
this can be fixed by making the visual states of launched/focused app
tiles easy to distinguish from unused apps. It's that simple. there's
no need to chase around app tiles that are moving about on your desktop.
This change is off the table, but I'll spend a few minutes on
articulating why in the hope that it serves to guide thinking on other
parts of the interface.
We don't believe most users really understand the concept of "running"
nearly as well as they understand "switching". And the fact that we
clever people are blurring the line even further all the time does not
help. For example, we are adding apps which run in the background (think
your music player streaming songs to the network with no windows in the
alt-tab, think d-bus activation of apps that start when needed without
the user invoking them).
So, Hans says "the problem is that the visual indicator is not obvious
enough". Yes, if knowing what's running is super-critical. But that's an
anorak way of seeing the world. People in fact are mainly concerned with
switching - "give me Skype now please", and they don't really know very
well if it's running or not running when they are not interested in it.
Skype of course is unusual in that there are good reasons to care - you
can't be online and callable if it isn't running - which is why it
generally tries to get itself a spot in the indicators. A better
approach *might* be to have a dynamic icon for Skype, which conveys that
macro state... running/not running isn't as useful as online/offline,
and only the app knows what's useful and how best to convey that.
So things to take away:
* not all pieces of semantic info are equally useful, we don't have to
answer every question, we can prioritise certain journeys and make them
disproportionately wonderful
* we prioritise switching ("give me Skype now") and blur the line
between launching and switching because in the minds of most people that
line is blurry anyway
* we probably want to explore richer state conveyance in the launcher
icons than just running, let's use the skype online/offline example and
run with it
Make sense?
Please don't push the line of making the "running" indicator louder, it
will fall on deaf ears. But please do explore the "dynamic skype icon"
idea further, that has legs.
Mark
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