On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 17:05:02 Alex Fiestas wrote: > So a 2level tree with the amount of branches and leaves per branches we have > in kickoff is scientifically proved to be better than a grid with the same > amount of leaves?
this question is malformed. it depends on the number of leaves[1]; the accuracy of the branch labels [2]; how well applications can be sorted relative to the values used to find them by the user[3]; if there is partitioning within the grid (which is another form of branches and leaves) and how that partitioning is chosen and displayed; etc. a ton of research was done in the 90s and early 2000s around these issues, though they mostly focussed on website navigation. as for typical usage of launchers ... on Plasma Active, there is the grid of applications approach in the launcher. i find that as soon as i have more than a couple pages, this rapidly becomes very craptastic to use. this mirrors both personal experience and observation of people using similar launchers on smartphones. with kickoff, the categories are limited by the app menu organization. this organization was accomlished with, at least to my knowledge, no usability process such as card sorting exercises applied to it and the results reflect that -> people seem to struggle with finding things in that hierarchy. once aware of search possibilities, people seem to quickly find applications based on search criterion, but this is slower than selecting from a focused list. one big question, which we shockingly do not have an answer for[4], is what people use these launcher listings for in actual, common, real-world usage. once that is understood clearly, a strategy for serving that need can be derived. they can even be tested, once we know what we need to measure for. if may turn out, for instance, that a simple search field that lists the most commonly launched application beneath it is all anyone needs or wants. or it might be horribly inadequate, even if it might look really sexy. [1] human list scanning has limits; on a carefully managed system there might only be a dozen or so application in the app menu and that is likely to be very easy to manage in a grid listing. if, however, there are several dozen applications on the average system, a grid can become inneficient [2] is "Internet" really a meaningful category for today's applications and users? [3] a list of countries sorted alphabetically is just fine for finding a country quickly (ignoring possible issues related to localization of place names :); a list of countries sorted by lattitude is probably not so easy to use, however. [4] personally, launchers don't interest me much. for other topics which i do find more interesting, i have done more "field" experiments and reading on. i wish that those who find launchers interesting would similarly apply themselves to the topic and gather real data so as to uncover the questions that need asking and then work on evidence based answers. opinion based design is probably why the launchers we have are serviceable but not great. -- Aaron J. Seigo
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