Ubuntu Unity usability testing results and analysis

Post by rbanffy » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 5:09 PM UTC

rufugee wrote: post #21

fingerprinter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree pretty vehemently. Are you running 11.04 beta2? I've been running it for months now and I LOVE Unity. I installed on my wife's machine, and while she doesn't love it (she really doesn't care one way or another about computers etc etc) she appreciates it in many ways. Though, the best way I can describe my wife's interaction with Unity is she gets less annoyed with it than she does/did with our iMac…

This ^ I've been running Unity for 24 hours now, and I can honestly say it's been the best desktop experience I've had in all my years. Notice I said best "desktop experience", and not "best Linux desktop experience". I have been running Windows since 3.1, Linux since Red Hat 5.2, and OS X since, well, Leopard. Unity is by far the best and most cohesive experience I've had so far. It tops OS X by a wide margin...it h…

Post by viraptor » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 5:14 PM UTC

rufugee wrote: post #21

fingerprinter wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree pretty vehemently. Are you running 11.04 beta2? I've been running it for months now and I LOVE Unity. I installed on my wife's machine, and while she doesn't love it (she really doesn't care one way or another about computers etc etc) she appreciates it in many ways. Though, the best way I can describe my wife's interaction with Unity is she gets less annoyed with it than she does/did with our iMac…

This ^ I've been running Unity for 24 hours now, and I can honestly say it's been the best desktop experience I've had in all my years. Notice I said best "desktop experience", and not "best Linux desktop experience". I have been running Windows since 3.1, Linux since Red Hat 5.2, and OS X since, well, Leopard. Unity is by far the best and most cohesive experience I've had so far. It tops OS X by a wide margin...it h…

Post by ZeroGravitas » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 8:38 PM UTC

realugglan wrote: post #40

quadhome wrote: post #19

Some of these are humbling. They reinforce how disconnected I-- a programmer-- am from the average person. > P1 recovered amazingly well after trying to save "Letter to Mr Smith 08/04/11", and getting the vile response "Error stating file '/home/ubuntu/Documents/Letter to Mr Smith 08/04': No such file or directory" That's something I'd never consider, what with various directory separators baked into my subconscious.

Yes, I thought the same thing! Really shows the value of running tests with people with other backgrounds. Just for fun I tried saving a document in Microsoft Office 2007 here with a filename containing slashes. I got a slightly better response: "Ogiltigt filnamn" (Illegal filename). Not as confusing, but still no help at all on what was wrong with it or how to correct it.

Post by rvkennedy » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 9:01 PM UTC

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #61

andybak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why invent a new bit of jargon then? Where does this get explained to people (bearing in mind users don't read! The solution is to call it the Windows key as 95%+ of Ubuntu users will know it as that and have a Windows keyboard.

It's not really "invented" so much as having been called the "super" key for a long time by Unix convention, and having been adopted by Microsoft to become the Windows key where it actually showed up on consumer keyboards. If you look at a classic Solaris keyboard for example, you'll find four classic modifier keys: control, alt, meta, and super.

Post by danielsoneg » Fri, Apr 15, 2011, 9:20 PM UTC

hesselink wrote: post #52

realugglan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I thought the same thing! Really shows the value of running tests with people with other backgrounds. Just for fun I tried saving a document in Microsoft Office 2007 here with a filename containing slashes. I got a slightly better response: "Ogiltigt filnamn" (Illegal filename). Not as confusing, but still no help at all on what was wrong with it or how to correct it.

I just tried the same on the Mac (in TextEdit). If you start with a slash, you get a 'go to directory' dialog. If you enter a slash later in the filename, it saves with a slash in the filename. The 'magic' is that it actually uses colons, which are shown as slashes in the UI. If you try to enter a colon in the filename, it replaces it with a dash. Renaming a file in finder to use a colon, gives a message similar to y…