On Tue, Jan 26, 2021 at 6:24 PM Allan Day <aday(a)redhat.com> wrote:
When we recently did user testing on the shell, it was like the
testers didn't really see "Activities", and it would often be the last
thing that they tried in the top bar.
I'm not surprised, it doesn't look interactive to begin with. If it had
some color or shown a short animation after logging in, it would get more
obvious. I'm not saying I want it, I don't know (it depends, as always),
but I believe it would work better for newcomers.
My theory is that this is because it's a label - it doesn't attract
your attention in the same way a simple shape. I also wonder whether
it's to do with the fact that "Activities" is more of a past-tense
noun rather than a call to action ("start", "launch", etc).
There's a reason why the Windows 95->XP start button had "Start" written
on
it, and why it's still called the Start button to this day [1]. I wouldn't
mind having it called the same way ("Start" and perhaps even a logo, could
be even your distribution logo), I'm not in the "we must never take
inspiration from Microsoft" group, and it would immediately be familiar to
mostly everybody.
I'm not saying it's the best idea ever, perhaps there's a better word to
use. But Start instead of Activities would improve the purpose of the
button, I believe, at the expense of some "MS copycat" remarks.
[1]
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/open-the-start-menu-4ed57ad7-...