Feedback from What New Users Want BoF at ubucon

[Corey Burger]

On 8/20/06, Sebastian Heinlein <glatzor at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Sa, 2006-08-19 at 22:13 -0700, Corey Burger wrote:
> > On 8/19/06, Oliver Grawert <ogra at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > > hi,
> > > On Fr, 2006-08-18 at 16:52 -0700, Corey Burger wrote:
> > > > The other issue was that of the LiveCd. Once you get into the desktop,
> > > > it is not apparently clear that you are running a LiveCD. Thus I
> > > > propose we put a notification bubble (this was mdz's idea) up a live
> > > > desktop to tell people.
> > > how would that work ? popping it up in intervals (annoying) ? or just
> > > showing it on login (only the person who booted will see the bubble) ?
> >
> > It will only be on the live cd and only shown once.
> >
> > > i'd propose an artwork driven way and make it visible via the wallpaper,
> > > unless you actively change that it will be always seen on a livecd and
> > > its more persistent. i trust our artteam that they would be able to do
> > > it in an elegant and unobtrusively way.
> >
> > Interesting idea Both ideas should be created and tested, as they are trivial.
> >
> > Corey
>
> May I ask what the root of this issue is? Did the user expect that their
> changes would be permanently? If yes, I think that both solutions won't
> be sufficient.

The issue was that users were totally unaware that they were on a
LiveCD as there was not indication. Matt, Jordan Mantha and myself
spoke about it briefly and given that a full app was rejected, a
notification icon was accepted as a possible solution.

>
> At first we cannot be sure that the user sees the notification, since it
> would disappear after some seconds. The user could just put the CD into
> his drive, go to fetch some coffee or do other stuff during the boot
> process.

Yes, but no solutions are really optimal.

>
> Secondly only putting a "Live-CD" label on the wallpaper doesn't explain
> the actual effects of using a live CD.
>
> Perhaps we should think about a nag screen if it is really such an
> issue. A long term goal could be to enhance this nag screen in the
> future to provide an option to save changed data on e.g. an USB stick.

One idea might be to modify the bootup to process to notify the user
before they hit the desktop.

Corey