Week Two

After two weeks of Ubuntu use, I'm feeling pretty comfortable with it. This weeks taught me a few things on Ubuntu use and I have also learnt a few things about Ubuntu users, through IRC, Ubuntu forums and an online survey I am carrying out, which I have been viewing live. Perhaps the biggest discovery is that most Ubuntu users seem to favour adapting the default system to suit their needs. So with that in mind I decided to have a proper go myself, arriving at a set-up that suited my tastes aesthetically and facilitated usable interaction.

I haven't changed the panels, apart from adding application short cuts at the top, because I found the default setup very usable. You can add entirely new customizable panels and modify or remove the defaults entirely, which is far superior to the static set-up of windows. There are also a large number of useful widgets that can be added. You can even completely edit the drop down menus.

Whilst inexperienced computer users might feel out of their depth, the GUI interaction for customizing panels is pretty straightforward for a competent user (right click – new panel - properties/add-to-panel). Shortcuts can also be dragged and dropped onto panels.

In terms of theme I kept the default icons, changed the background and went for a pale blue panel and window colour, replacing the default orange and browns. The window border and scroll bars in focus I configured red, to make the focus immediately obvious when multiple applications are running.

The rest of the diary is dedicated to experiences with usability issues I found this week, in roughly the order they were found.

Installing software through the command line terminal

I discovered the command line terminal. Judging from many of the forum discussions it is crucial to the systems more advanced functions. This is an issue for me, I do not find command lines usable. For a start they violate the recognition over re-call heuristic. You really need to know what you are doing to use them, though I accept that plenty of linux users both need and appreciate them.

I attempted to download a piece of software called AWN, and was prompted to do the download and install manually from the command terminal. It wouldn't let me copy and paste, which I found irritating, and when prompted for my password, I typed and nothing came up on the screen. In the end I gave up, but later found out on a forum that the password is there when you typed - just not visible - again violating another usability heuristic.

Installing downloaded software through the windows GUI

I tried to download Thunderbird, having spent several hours trying to configure the default email client Evolution Mail (which actually has a better interface than Thunderbird, which is a shame). I could not find the install file and was baffled at how they had made it so difficult. I was thinking why don't they just make the install file symbol really obvious. When I did finally get to it didn't work. Searching on the forums once again, I was pointed to the add/remove applications manager in the applications drop-down.

The system presented was completely intuitive. It is basically an all in one search and install function. This level of integration makes far more sense than finding an application through the web browser, downloading the install file, locating, and then going through a sometimes lengthy install process (as in Windows). With the Ubuntu system the user simply searches or browses applications through a simple GUI (with the option of different alphabetically ordered categories), ticks the applications they want, and then clicks apply changes. The whole download and install process is then handled by the system. An absolute usability gem.

Sound Problems

Since the first install I had noticed that the sound output was at a lower level than in Windows. I didn't seem to be able to adjust it through the volume control GUI. This week the sound suddenly cut off whilst playing music, emitting a crackling sound. After forum searching I decided to bravely re-install the drivers manually through the command line. The process was only a few lines of code and actually not too bad, but really there needs to be a GUI way of doing it for users that are less confident. The re-install failed, so I ran hardware tests through the BIOS, which returned no problems. In the end it turned out to be that the PCM volume in the advanced volume controls had become muted. For a start this shouldn't have happened for no apparent reason. Notification and instruction upon a cut out would have been useful if possible, since the issue caused a serious problem for myself. According to many of the forums there are lots of similar problems in Ubuntu. They need to smooth these out if they are going to attract users.

Using arrows for navigation

When navigating folders through the arrow keys, backspace and enter buttons, the first press of an arrow in a new folder window always starts the focus at te top of the list. This is good usability (consistency and visibility heuristics). However when saving docs the backspace cannot be used to navigate back a level (as it can in normal navigation). This is an inconsistency that can easily be fixed.

Snipping tool

Missing on default set-up. I downloaded a similar application, but it wasn't half as good as the Vista snipping tool. Such a useful tool should be installed on default I believe.

PDF to document

I read and transcript a lot of papers. I had problems with formatting when I copied and pasted text from double columned papers in the default PDF reader into open office. This is a serious usability issue to myself and other academic researchers.

Round up

Despite usability issue I came across this week, Ubuntu continues to impress me at the level of usability and interaction.