Feedback and problems regarding the application launcher

[Tom Zander]

Short version; right click on the application launcher and select 
"Show alternative" and select one of the other ones.

The Application Launcher is a typical usability disaster that 
(looking at the merge request) comes from too many chefs and not 
enough actual users testing it. Making it default before it was 
found actually nice and useful by a large section of the 
**users**.

See https://ibb.co/FKS4nQP

Some UX flaws that we found with actual usage;

- texts are not shown fully. (Sl... instead of sleep).
- pressing the shutdown options then gives another full screen 
dialog to select _again_. Why now simply one "Shutdown" item?

- Items that have a dot dot dot instead of the full text do not 
have a mouse-over tooltip or auto-expanding feature to show the 
full text. I don't know what I'm clicking on here...

- the top row of items in my screenshot are a mix between tabs 
(applications / places) and buttons (sleep etc) and one popup.
But there is no visual indication about their different behaviors. 
This breaks one of the most fundamental UX rules: avoid 
surprises.

- The button (top right) that shows alternative ways to leave 
(like logout) is an arrow-left. If it were on the left side of 
the dialog, that might work, but on the right the concept just 
fails to indicate "leave". Additionally, it should be square to 
indicate leave. Not round.
The way it is now, it looks like a "collapse to right" icon.

- List on left is sorted alphabetically, with fun things 
like "All" and "Development" in English being prominently at the 
top. Which makes it the worst case for most users.
No, the excuse that people won't install stuff they will not use 
does not fly.

- The old problem of menus changing on hover has re-appeared.
Users not so adapt with the mouse will not move the mouse very 
fast and they will move from one of the menus to the item in a 
diagonal line. As the mouse moves, they will end up triggering a 
menu-change involuntarily until they realize the problem (hah!) 
and move horizontal to the icons area before they go vertically 
down to the icon they want.

- List on the left is not very consistent when operated with a 
touch-screen. Sometimes a swipe leads to selections, sometimes it 
leads to moving the list. This is a solved problem, people. Who 
went and started re-innovating flick-lists?

- My full name is listed bottom left. Why? That does NOT belong 
in an application launcher.
Hovering over it, again gives me a 'dot dot dot' type text that 
only adds confusion. (and why?)

- the "Places" tab has 3 items
  + "Computer" (which is a place, but it then lists places,
      but also Remote. contradicting its sorting).
  + "History" this is not a place. What is that doing here?
  + "Frequently used". Nice feature, but that should
  affect sorting, not force people to go to a back-alley place to
   find the things he used often. Completely misses the point
   again.

- Search, as OP indicated, is interesting. For instance I DO have 
kcalc installed and its description is "Scientific Calculator".
Searching for "ca" does NOT find it.
Now, if I type a 3rd char, suddenly it does. Weird.


[old geezer rant]

Now, in my time we had people actually sit down with users and do 
a dozen main usage tasks and then we'd find out what the problems 
were based on actual users doing stuff. User testing.

That actually gave pretty decent software. Stable software we had 
back then that we now see Windows copying for their version 11. 
It would be nice if we went back to this level of stability.
Especially before making something this fresh become the default 
it very clearly is not ready to be.

/end rant.



On dinsdag 22 juni 2021 15:16:02 CEST Michael Algemeen wrote:
> Dear recipient,
> 
> I am writing you because I have some feedback and problems
> regarding the application launcher.
> 
> I have replaced kcalc with another calculator. I uninstalled it
> via the package manager, but it stays in the launcher. I can't
> figure out how to get rid of it, can you help?
> 
> Also, when I type “ca”, the first program it returns is
> “cantana” despite never using it. Can I make it suggest
> “Calculator” instead? Xfce does this.
> 
> Also, how do I remove entries that aren't actually installed at
> all? It makes for a lot of cruft. I can't find the settings
> for this anywhere