Ubiquity Slideshow for Ubuntu
Andrew Sayers
andrew-bugs.launchpad.net at pileofstuff.org
Sat Jun 13 15:08:30 UTC 2009
Hi Dylan,
I like the slideshow, but I think it needs to be shorter and more
user-centric. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts that occur to me:
A famous psychology paper[1] showed that people can remember about 7
things at once. Any more than seven slides of information, and people
will start forgetting what you told them.
When trying to write concisely, I find it helpful to imagine each word
costs £1 to write. That lets me ask myself "would I pay a pound for
this word?", and the answer is usually no :)
For the slideshow, I would suggest keeping each paragraph on one line.
The text sometimes focusses too much on "Ubuntu provides <feature>",
instead of "Ubuntu lets you fulfil <desire>". IMHO, users don't have
much patience for that sort of lecturing.
The text would look better if it were vertically centred in the area it
has available.
I've made a branch[2] that tries to fulfil the above as best as I can.
It's a fairly ruthless cut, so you'll probably want to cherry-pick ideas
rather than importing it wholesale. The branch also makes navigation a
bit easier - go to Slideshow.html#controls :)
And a final thought - how would you feel about having an initial screen
that says "thanks for installing, click <here> for the slideshow, or
click <here> to play a game"? You can have quite a bit of fun in
Javascript nowadays, and I can't tell you how many times I've sat
through yet another install screen, thinking "I could sure go for a bit
of Pacman right now..." :)
- Andrew
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
[2]https://code.launchpad.net/~andrew-bugs-launchpad-net/ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu/another-andrew-improvements
More information about the ubuntu-doc
mailing list