Default Desktop Experience for 11.04 - User testing results

[Toby Smithe]

2011/4/15 Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt at canonical.com>:
> *   8/10 people could find a window's menus, but 7/8 of them learned to
>    access them by hovering over maximized close/minimize/unmaximize
>    buttons then moving horizontally -- which was extremely slow, and
>    failed whenever the window wasn't maximized.

Why not swap the default state of the panel from one where the
application name is shown in full and the menus hidden, to the
alternative where the menus are shown, and long application names are
partially obscured? Then, allow that if someone mouse-overs the
application name, it reveals itself fully; in this case, an arrow
symbol (for example) could be included to make this action
discoverable.

I believe this swap wouldn't cause any usability problems (unless
knowing the long name of a window is critically important), but
instead would make the location of window menus obvious.

Of course, if it is intentional that menus are hard to discover (to
push application developers towards Chrome-like streamlining), or if
there would be problems due to claims of Mac-mimicry, then it clearly
makes sense to keep the current behaviour.

-- 
Toby Smithe
http://launchpad.net/~tsmithe