Usability is not to follow the path of already conditioned users. Usability is – in a nutshell and heavily shortened - to supply the user with sane defaults, to give him the opportunity to change those and to teach him in an easy fashion how to achieve his goal. Monotony often is essential. Usability normally means to be logical. There is far more to usability, but those are essential points any programmer can implement and should have in mind.

When someone switches to Linux he is normally OK to cope with changes in usability. Once he learned that Linux is different he is OK with the thought to learn something new. Ironically, those users most often embrace the change and find it to be more intuitive after all, once they have grasped the concept of it – which mostly is to be logical.

So this is an example of what usability is not:

<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:45] how to remove everything this one click install installed and install 4.0.4
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:47] is there a one-click uninstall?
<djouallah!n=Secretar@81.52.163.146> [23:47] SatManUK, no
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:47] damn..
<Cymage!n=james@unaffiliated/cymage> [23:48] SatManUK, look at the ymp, it should say what it installed, then use yast to remove it
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:48] there was a lot
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:48] ok
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:49] just remove the entire .kde4 directory?
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:51] where is .kde4 located?
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:52] ok but what about all the rpm’s?
<SatManUK!n=kvirc@92.8.101.102> [23:52] aren’t they located somewhere else?

Had SatManUK known yast sw_single, he would have essentially had no problem. And One-Click didn’t help him at all, it even hindered him from getting done what he wanted to get done. From a usability standpoint I see two ways out:

1. Do something to be able to cleanly remove packages that were installed via One-Click (which also might mean deleting some repos on the client) the One-Click way.
2. Get rid of One-Click or somehow integrate it into yast sw_single (or only use One-Click and get rid of yast sw_single)

Putting two coexistent systems on a distribution is OK, but each system should have full functionallity. I know ymps just use zypp / yast, but the regular user does not. One-Click and Yast are two different systems to him and the tendency is to use One-Click, which is not a good thing because it is extremly limitied in comparison to yast. Some users are even not aware of yast anymore.

I have stated my opinion about One-Click, other UI changes and project decisions quite often. Some say I spread FUD.  I don’t think so. I think it is essential to openly communicate which problems I see. If I stayed silent, there would be no point in being part of the project. And frankly, while I only am a psychology student, I still feel entitled to say something about usability, because it is my core interest. I work in a EEGlab that – among stress and aggression – also does research in the field of usability. And with a state of the art eyetracker and a 128-channel EEG we have some theories and opinions about usability. And we can test those theories. I really feel I have an idea about what I am talking about.

I could say a lot more, but this is enough for now.  Yes, this article is a little provocative – it ought to be. Yes, this is a one-time happening I used to illustrate my opinion, but I still think it shows a tendency. Hopefully, you understand that this article should be understood as my contribution to stir up some thought about how dumb we want our users after all. We treat them as dumb people, they will become dumb people. And maybe just having the biggest growth and the biggest userbase simply is not enough to stay ahead of competitors in the future.

Siju: Thank you for pointing out the conversation to me.