For Ubuntu 9.10, the Ayatana Project together with the Canonical Design Team will focus on fixing some of the “paper cuts” affecting user experience within Ubuntu. Here I offer an example of a paper cut and a preliminary definition of the term.
Let me introduce you to Launchpad bug #302231, the perfect example of a paper cut. In the screenshot below, you can see GNOME Do’s preferences window, opened to the Plugin configuration tab with the plugin search field highlighted in green. When a user opens Do’s preferences window, most of the time that user is going to enable, disable, or configure a plugin. For this reason we worked very hard to make the Plugin configuration tab easy to understand, and not only simple to use but fun to use as well. We also select the Plugin tab by default whenever you open the preferences window.
Here’s where the paper cut fits in–the search field lost default focus at some point during development, and two releases were made in which users had to click on the search field to focus it nearly every time they configured plugins. This is a very small detail, and it was extremely simple to remedy, but it slipped through the cracks for two successive releases before I sat down to fix it. Part of the reason I put off fixing it is because it seemed inconsequential, as the amount of programming required to fix it was so small compared to other bugs in the application. Also, as with many other paper cuts, users (myself included) became habituated to this annoyance, learning to ignore and work around it.
Even though this was a small bug with a trivial fix, fixing it improved the usability of the application dramatically. Once fixed, the experience of configuring the application became significantly less painful, and this bolstered an aura of usability surrounding the entire application.
From this experience, I would say that a paper cut is a bug that will improve user experience if fixed, is small enough for users to become habituated to it, and is trivial to fix.
13 comments
Hi Dave,
My favourite of these is when you save a file in Firefox and if you navigate to a different directory the focus is suddenly on the filetype of all things, instead of the filename where one would expect it. It’s amazing how annoying these things can be, especially because it is obvious how easy it would be to fix. It would be great to have a way to highlight these in the bug tracking system. Maybe devs could knock off a few of them at once.
A good concept – really encapsulates the idea well
Thanks,
Jacques.
Awesome! All these little one/few line fixes can add up to some major in overall usability. I wonder how many other applications suffer focus problems.
@Jonathan: you can stop wondering. Start wondering how many apps *don’t* suffer focus problems. Soon you’ll start to see that it is the focus problems that acquire applications on their own.
Moreover, Focus is in the eye of the beholder
Zen
Just added another “paper cut” bug to Do’s launchpad: https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/do/+bug/383540
One similar paper cut I have seen in GNOME is that in the new PulseAudio volume control application, the “Applications” tab should be the deafult open tab, but isn’t. I rarely want to use “Sound Effects” which is their default tab.
Hi there….
A question about Files & Folder plugin:
If you add a folder contains a lot of folders inside, How can you make the depth Unlimited?
Thanks
The bug that Jacques mention is really annoying, it sometimes happens to me in pidgin when I am trying to edit my status and the focus is, no idea where.
But, I can live with the bug in Pidgin, I am not editing that but very occasionally, however, I hope the one in Firefox gets fixed.
I’ve had a minor pet peeve with the gnome-app-install for a while now, and I think it would qualify as a papercut.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-app-install/+bug/366760
Great, i often hear 2 complains from new users in ubunutu that they find non-trivial. maybe not cuts but anyhow..
1. Adding a repository is not as easy as it should be.
2. fileassociation options are not that clear, from firefox and others, how to change, etc
I have posted about one old minor pet-peeve of mine, related to getting information on image files on Nautilus. You may read it at http://blog.zunino.eti.br/?p=52.
Very good, thanks.
rok
Purposing a new papercut: in the Gtk+ file-open dialog, if you start typing with your focus on the file list, a text field with what you’re typing appears *over* the “Open” and “Cancel” buttons (or others, depending on the exact dialog configuration).
Thus, if you finished your search and are focusing on the folder/file you want, you need to click one time to make that textfield go away, and then perform your action.
It would be enough to just move that textfield on the bottom-left corner of the file list instead than the bottom-right one.
Well..
I’m having many problems with the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10.
1)No audio on any of the video players.
Only audio is coming from Amarok.
No websites, no nothing…no audio.
2)The web-cam, Logitech, used to be beautiful, clear, crisp, lovely images, with Ubuntu 8.04-9.04…and now, the settings have gone too dark, and I cannot restore them, like I was able to do with not emesene, It just doesn’t work, nor any other web-cam program.
3)Another thing I have noticed, is the new OS uses much more memory and CPU.
I am always on 99-100% CPU usage, even while just scrolling down on the browser; making the entire Kubuntu experience very painful.
Kubuntu 9.04 was always very fast.
I was considering going over to Mac…BUT MAC IS VERY EXPENSIVE.
Haven’t tried Win7….maybe I’ll sin, and do dual-boot with new Win7.
Can anybody help me with all my problems with Kubuntu 9.10?
or tell me how to revert to 9.04, where everything worked just fine?
sonhadorpr [at] gmail [dot] com
Thank you.
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