Comment 212 for bug 532633

@ Mark Shuttleworth I think what @Pablo Quirós meant was that the aim of design and usability is to make the life of the user easier, to improve their workflow hence their productivity. If the design fails to achieve this (and only the user can tell) then that design has failed and reason be restored.

>Yes, design is a democracy in the sense that users vote with their feet
>they choose the products that work well for them. If we fail badly
>with this, or any other piece, they will go somewhere else, and we lose
Are you saying that those who think that the new design of windows button placement does not suit them, should take a walk and find another distro? You might ask how can we know if users are happy with this design choice without first trying it and see from their feedbacks if it helped make their lives easier? True but you really don't want to perform such a test on an LTS which is the version of Ubuntu that is adopted by enterprise users. Even though I feel this change is a solution looking for a problem. Still I am not against giving it a try in one of the in between LTS releases and using the feedback generated as input on whether such a move would benefit the user or not.

>Look, I understand this is risky. In my judgment, it's worth the risk.

 Serious Mark you really think making this risky decisions for an LTS release is worth it? seriously?
>Being able to tackle risky things is one of the things that gives us the
>chance to catch up to the big guys, and beat them.
One way to catch the big boys is ask what their secret is. and one of it is consistency. Windows as pretty much maintained the same look since windows 95, they just added more polish and more superlatives but its essentially the same start-menu, windows management buttons, the same task-manager hence a user knows what to expect from a newer version of windows. This is one of the reason why windows is very popular many people know what to expect and how to find their way around. Even with all its flaws Microsoft or Apple wont wake up one morning and decide their were going to change the location of their window button placement its just not something you want to do for a serious OS. You dont experiment too much with a serious OS. look at redhat or Sled the big players in the linux desktop They don't experiment with their users. They try to keep things consistent I am not saying Ubuntu should be that conservative or enterprise focussed, we can always maintain a balance.. keep the desktop consistent and the underthehood stuffs should do the magic design thats and design and usability decisions should really improve the usability and workflow of users. and not force them to have to relearn how to use their desktop. Consistency is the biggest problem of free desktop we always move the post to many times.

 Whatever decision the usability team makes the deciding factor is how the user reacts to its, whether its makes their usage of ubuntu easier or adds to their problem. You raised the issue of the Kernel team (among other teams) If they make a radical change to the Ubuntu kernel which impacts negatively on the user. You would get the same backlash you are getting now. The reason why people are not poking too much into their business is because for most they are doing their work fine. Ubuntu and the development process is (or should be) actually democratic if not in voting but in checks and balancing. The usability team come up with a design. If it doesn't work for the user they would receive a backlash (such as this) hence the community is a check to bring the design team back down to earth (no pun intended) and to face the reality of everyday computer usage something which is quite beyond the drawing board. I am not against taking risk or trying something new. I just feel for an LTS things should be kept quite conservative.