The most important metric, is does the GUI impede, or support the persons workflow. Measing distance travelled and mouse clicks seems like a Desktop Taylorism. Time and motion in GNOME. I don't think the GUI is hugely important anyway, as long as it accomodates the user. To much importance is placed on rejigging it IMO. On 10/19/2011 04:26 PM, Alexander wrote:

I actually think Unity is great and every single Ubuntu novice I have shown it to picks it up in no time. I don't know about the metrics you propose, I think user experience takes in more variables than those. I'm a power user by the way and usually make use of 9 view ports (compiz desktops) . I think Unity comes into its own when you learn the keyboard shortcuts. But newbies who stick to the mouse find it very easy.

Canonical do a lot of user testing but it's obvious that they're trying to create a user interface that can work for everyone, everywhere, on all devices. That's a mammoth ask and I reckon they're doing something that not even Apple can do elegantly. On Oct 19, 2011 4:11 PM, "Andrew Thornton" wrote:

...

OK. If I am a software developer then Elvis still lives. So maybe this is all reinventing the wheel. I don't know.

Anyway. I find Unity in ubuntu very counter-intuitive. It feels weird.

Yet it is meant to be the latest thing/fad/trend to make me happy. No evidence. No measurements. No tests. I am just meant to be a "happy" Unity user. So, what about this:

1. the distance the mouse travels across the screen to use a GUI 2. the number of mouseclicks. 3. the clock time taken to do task x.

1 + 2 + 3 = user figure for a GUI. The lower the score the better.

All you guys here who make software. Do you do any measurements like this to arrive at the usability of software such as a GUI or anything else? Or is it just Macbeth Witches style chuck in eyes of newt, frog legs, pigs' blood and basil into the cauldron and hope for the best?

Andrew

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On 19 October 2011 17:41, Ben Sturmfels wrote: [...]

I can't comment on Unity, but Gnome 3 had a great deal of usability design and testing put in. The focus was to make it a desktop that's easy to use. The progress they've made has been amazing.

Unity too had reasonable testing and as with most (all?) of what Canonical are up to it is published in a fairly open manner: http://design.canonical.com/2011/04/unity-benchmark-usability-april-2011/

That said, some technical users may prefer a more minimal interface.

I definitely agree with this, I absolutely *can't stand* the new interfaces (either GNOME or Unity), but then again I'm a fairly technical user and run an extremely customised GNOME 2 set up as it is.

Being free software, they are free to choose another interface.

There's also actually no reason to choose another interface any time soon as the current LTS is supported until 2015: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS . If you want an Ubuntu with more modern packages but the same old GNOME interface, there's also "Ubuntu Classic" on the Login screen in 11.04 (which I'm still using). There are some issues with getting *exactly* the same interface in 11.10 right now (but then again it hasn't even been out a whole week yet). Beyond that there's plenty of other distros or PPAs to choose from. Also, fairly relevant to this thread, Phoronix are running a survey about GNOME now: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=gnome_survey Phoronix are fairly well respected and any (constructively worded!) feedback they aggregate to provide the GNOME guys is likely to be taken very seriously. Cheers, Dave