kickoff fusion idea and mockup

[J.R. Mauro]

2008/7/11 Loïc Marteau <loic.marteau at gmail.com>:

>
> Hum
>
> Sorry, but with all the respect and the love that i have for KDE and the
> people behind this great Desktop, i have to be honnest with this and to said
> that kickoff is at *my* user point of view the least usable things than i
> have ever seen in user interface...
>
> When a new user want to discover apps installed on the computer he have to
> do a looooot of click and mouse move, not sure than this is compatible with
> any usability principle...
>
> Same problem when a user want to reach an apps in the applications stuff
>
>    - 3 clicks and one mouse move in the better case
>    - 3 clicks ans some nasty/horrible mouse clicking/movement with the
>    scrollbar if the apps is at the bottom of one sub-menu
>    - 5 clicks etc if the user select the wrong sub-menu...
>
>
Why are we clicking? (smart) Search is the best way to solve this, along
with presenting what you use often in the default view.
If you know the app name, type it, if you know the category, type it. If a
new user wants to discover something they only need a rough idea, and
can type "images" or "games," and then they get a list. With one click they
can get what they want. With a 2 clicks they can add it to favorites
(although I think that could be made better by adding a little star to the
entries like in the add plasma widget menu) Hey, KDE maintainers, there's
a good feature, no? I hope you think so! :-)

How would you suggest changing the applications menu? Remove categories? If
you do that, the user is flooded with a huge list that they have to
navigate. At least with categories they are guided. And if the user insists
on going through these menus instead of searching, they can easily move the
app they want to favorites, where it's 1 click once the menu is open. The
"All applications" area is just meant to be a manifest for reference, not
the
main interface, that's why it's not the first active tab. If you get into
the right mindset, and use what *is* the first active tab (favorites and
search) your usability problems will disappear.

For me the applications part of kickoff is just *totally not* usable and is
> not at the level of quality than the rest of kde 4.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> 2008/7/11 J.R. Mauro <jrm8005 at gmail.com>:
>
>
>>
>> At the moment, kickoff looks the least awkward of anything I've seen.
>> Submenus popping out like in
>> Windows are annoying and easily lost, and big things like tasty menu are
>> just too cluttered and clunky.
>> Kickoff is clean, and was the result of serious usability studies IIRC.
>>
>> In short, the real issue is "being psychic." I know raptor is going to try
>> to do this, and I hope the facilities in raptor
>> will come into Kickoff's code. I think the default tab showing what you
>> want and use, and a better, annotated search
>> bar where both give you your commonly used items higher priority is the
>> key to a better Kmenu.
>>
>>
>>>
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>
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