[ubuntu-art] Some criticism

[Carlos Moreno]

Hopefully constructive criticism, though I'm not sure about the
timing in terms of any upcoming changes.  Anyway...

I think my biggest complaint about the look of Ubuntu's interface
(the default GNOME, of course --- don't know about KDE, and
sorry to be blunt, but could not care any less about KDE) is the
"unicolor-ism" of the icons.  Color is an incredibly powerful and
efficient mechanism to convey information, and it is IMHO being
sacrificed.

Perhaps the most extreme example is the Emblems --- in the
"Emblems" tab in the Properties window for a folder or a file,
I see a bunch of little orange things, all close to identical to each
other, and only distinguishable by taking a very close look at
them --- same size, same color, same shape  (orange, round);
plus they're flat --- when you introduce "full-color" to the icons,
you can even include 3D touches.

An example:  I open the Emblems screen and you ask me to find
the camera icon, and it would take me 5, or 10, or 15 seconds;
why?  I would have to go and carefully inspect each of the icons.
It's akin to searching for a specific word in a paragraph.

I have a Fedora box right here next to my main, Ubuntu one, and
the same exercise only requires looking in the general direction
of the window where the icons are --- the camera is so obvious
that it's like I simply take a glance at the screen, and the camera
"calls me".  Another dramatic example is the "Oh no!" icon.  So
extremely and instantaneously obvious to my eyes in the full-
color Fedora emblems;  flat round orange thing with some white
lines in it (which is to say identical to every single other one) in
the Ubuntu emblems

Another extremely dramatic example --- I just did the experiment
and the result was shocking even to myself  (and really, I'm being
honest --- if not fully unbiased, I'm really being as honest as possible
with the test, being the subject myself).

I see the "Shared" icon in Fedora (it simply "jumped" to my eyes),
so I figured, let's see how long it takes me to locate it in the Ubuntu
screen;  I extended the window so that *all* the available Emblems
fit within it, with no scroll.

After some 10 seconds of visual inspection, I concluded that the
Shared icon is not there.  I only discovered that the icon was there
when I went one by one **reading** the caption below the icons.
Yes, perhaps to a certain extent, I was looking for a hand, but not
consciously --- I know that the drawings are not the same;  I was
just going through the icons trying to identify the "Shared" (and
I did stop at a couple of them, to then conclude that no, it wasn't
that one).

I then asked my wife to do the same --- without showing her the
"Shared" icon in Fedora (to avoid biasing her), it took her some
15 seconds to tell me hat the Shared icon was not there;  and
that is because I had to ask her to refrain from reading the
captions, because while she was looking for it, she was reading
the captions of each and every one of them.

I know that the relevance of the above task is secondary --- the
more important one is that if I see that icon, do I quickly identify
it as the "Shared" icon?  The answer is, maybe yes;  but still, if
I see a screen with 20 folders, each of them with a different emblem,
then I will definitely have to go one by one carefully inspecting
them.  Let's say that it is quite shocking the fact that *reading*
the caption on a "going one by one" basis gave me a more accurate
result than the visual inspection.  You know, so much for "an
image is worth a thousand words" !!

Other details/pitfalls coming from the lack of color (the lack of
"multi-color", that is):

1) The icon "photos" is easily mistaken for a folder  (as is the
    "images" icon).
2) The icon "unreadable" is easily mistaken for a mail envelope
3) The icon "multimedia" looks more like a staircase to me.
4) How on earth would anyone expect the "distinguished" icon
    to be interpreted properly?

I guess you could still try to keep a theme consistent with the
"human" aspect --- do not restrict, but at least *favor* earth
colors (green, brown, white, cleaf, etc.).

Maybe, if you must avoid the "full-color"  (which really, I see
no reason why anyone would), then perhaps using the three
basic Ubuntu colors (the logo colors --- read, yellow, orange),
maybe there could be some additional visual information, no?

If I'm completely missing something like the set of icons being
configurable, I certainly would appreciate being shown/told
how to do that --- but still my complaint would remain active
in that the default choice of icons would be sub-optimal.

Thanks,

Carlos
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