Comment 410 for bug 532633

On 25/03/10 17:12, Atel Apsfej wrote:
> Yes this is one of the fundamental communication breakdowns between the
> closed door design team and the external community. Shuttleworth and
> the design team want data.. but they haven't communicated what that
> means. Why hasn't that happened? Is the team concerned that the
> passionate minority with game the system and heavily bias the data that
> is being collected? There hasn't been a general data collecting
> methodology articulated for any of the experimental design decisions.
> This, more than any individual design decision, is the fundamental
> breakdown in communication which risks hardening passionate contributors
> in the Ubuntu community against Canonical in leading this work.
>

Atel, there is no conspiracy involved, nobody is afraid that data would
be biased, because it's clear that all data is somehow biased and will
need to be evaluated in that light. Nevertheless, data would be interesting.

I haven't said what data in particular, because I thought it better to
let people invent for themselves what might be a relevant study. If I
said "I want data on X Y and Z" we'd get into a long argument about
whether that's the relevant thing. I'd rather folks here had responded
by saying "cool, here's some data I gathered".

Since that hasn't happened, some things I'd be interested in:

 - where does the average mouse rest? i.e., when it's not being used,
where is the mouse, usually? Think of a looooong term heat map of mouse
locations, over a few hundred desktops and a few weeks. That would be
interesting. Lots of people have said "My mouse is generally near the
left because there's so much else there". others have said "The
scrollbars on the right mean my mouse is hanging out there". Data would
be useful.

 - are there accidental clicks on the close button in the new location?
We know that the new location has lots going on around it. Are people
accidentally clicking the wrong thing?

 - does it take longer to click it in the new location, once one is
moving with intent in the right direction? We know that the fact that
there's a lot around the target means finer motor control is required,
and we know that generally means slower, more careful, more irritating
movements. But is that actually measurably observed?

Those are three items I'd like data on.

But I'm sure there are folks following this conversation who could come
up with smarter and more insightful formulations.

Mark