[tadfisher]

> remains a huge usability misstep

Evidence? The Gnome project has performed UX studies[0] to validate their design, and has continually made changes in response (some of which I disagree with, FWIW).

[0]: https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Studies

[softirq]

You just linked to studies that directly support my point:

"On the other hand, new users generally got up to speed more quickly with Endless OS, often due to its similarity to Windows. Many of these testers found the bottom panel to be an easy way to switch applications. They also made use of the minimize button. In comparison, both GNOME 3.38 and the prototype generally took more adjustment for these users.

“I really liked that it’s similar to the Windows display that I have.” —Comment on Endless OS by a non-GNOME user"

[int_19h]

In my career, I witnessed several software UX changes that elicited massively negative user feedback once released - and every single one of those was backed by a UX study. It seems that if you have really strong opinions about what you want your software to look like, engineering UX studies around that is not difficult.

[cjk2]

Most UX studies ignore that users want people to leave things the fuck alone and stop breaking their workflows.

[addicted]

Or,

UX changes always elicit negative opinions and the studies show that once the change is familiar people prefer the new UX.

I’m reminded of the MS ribbon which was so heavily derided but a few years in, OpenOffice/LibreOffice also had to implement something similar because users significantly preferred it when set side by side.

[int_19h]

I don't think that this is always, or even more often, the case. I'll grant you that Ribbon might be an exception.

But the bigger problem is that these days, even when it is the case, by the time you get used to the new UX, it's not new anymore - and now it is on the way out, because the new crop of UX designers have yet another drastically different idea in mind (and they have UX studies to prove that it's better). But change itself carries a usability cost with it, and that is usually not accounted for at all. When it comes to desktop software specifically, quite frankly, what we had 20 years ago was already "good enough".

[pests]

I loved the ribbon on first sight. I also miss new features like that coming to products - nowadays it's all AI nonsense or the padding and spacing has been changed for the 10th time.

[hobo_mark]

We just deployed RHEL9 and had to quickly revert gnome because users (and me!) had no effing idea how to use it.

For instance, no button to minimize and maximize a window, no taskbar to switch between windows, what the actual...

[hummingly]

It took me almost half a year to figure out that Firefox was missing the minimize/maximize button because Gnome by default hides them. And I only figured out after having to install Gnome Tweak tool because I moved to Gnome temporarily...

[Longhanks]

Evidence? No other somewhat popular desktop rejects "core desktop ideas" the way gnome does. Both windows and Mac have desktop icons, tray icons, a task bar/dock, minimize and maximize buttons...

[blueflow]

It is infuriating that they used systematic approaches to UX and still came up with the current thing. I said it before, too many implicit gestures that are not discoverable until you google for it.

Last time i tried GNOME was last week and gave up after a day.

[Intralexical]

A lot of times, what you should be doing should probably be relatively obvious anyway. [1] Other times, the people you should be trying to understand are already directly and nearly universally telling you how they feel, and all you actually have to do is just listen. [2]

I'm not saying systematic ways of thinking are universally useless, but the appearance of being "systematic" or "objective" certainly seems to attract some people who use complexity as a means of obfuscating, and of reducing other people to a passive object of study or subject of control. In those cases, "research" isn't a way of finding what's correct. The important thing to them is that they're correct; they already know that they are, and the "studies" are meant to make sure you know it too as they do whatever they already wanted to do anyway.

Such individuals rarely seem to care about "evidence" at the start of their decisions. Only when they're trying to shut down subjective critical opinions, or rationalize the actions they've already taken.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_least_astonishmen...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Controversy_over_...

[blueflow]

I did not know that the GNOME 3 thing was such a big controversy. I dropped GNOME during that time for the same reasons, but i was unaware of how big this was.

[Intralexical]

Oh yeah, no. Multiple entire desktop environments with significant popularity (Cinnamon, MATE) owe their existence today to how universally hated GNOME 3 was, and how obstinant and intolerant the GNOME developers were towards differing opinions that challenged their "vision".

In fact, the same thing is sorta playing out even right now with GTK4 and other GNOME stuff, though I think with somewhat less public spectacle but arguably even larger development efforts behind it:

https://joshuastrobl.com/2021/09/14/building-an-alternative-...

https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/08/system76_developing_n...

https://blog.system76.com/post/closing-in-on-a-cosmic-alpha

https://github.com/BuddiesOfBudgie/budgie-desktop/issues/141

https://medium.com/@fulalas/gnome-mess-is-not-an-accident-4e...

[colanderman]

What implicit gestures? Everything in the Gnome desktop you can get to by clicking the "Activities" menu at the top-left: search bar, dock, applications button, minimized windows, and 2nd desktop all then become visible.

Granted, the applications button icon is quite nondescript (9 dots). But it's still just 2 clicks of prominent UI elements away.

Same # of clicks as Windows (Start -> Program Files) and MacOS (Finder -> Applications).

[blueflow]

Maximizing a Window. I had to google how to do it.

[colanderman]

What am I missing?.. there is a maximize button in the top-right corner of every window.

EDIT: Oh, I guess these are hidden by default? I don't remember enabling them on my setup but I've been using Gnome a few years now. I agree it would be better if they were visible by default.

[blueflow]

I only had a cross to close the window. Ubuntu 22.04.