Feedback from What New Users Want BoF at ubucon

[Corey Burger]

On 8/20/06, Viper550 <gthompson at cogeco.ca> wrote:
> Corey Burger wrote:
> > 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
> >
> >
> Better idea:
>
> Why don't we rig up Firefox to show a page talking about what exactly
> this disc is about automatically on login!
>
> Viper550

Then you would need to launch Firefox on first load, a painful
experience. Notification bubble is much lighter on memory.

Corey