Unity Shell Interface Usability Issues

Introduction

Unity is a shell interface that comes with latest versions of Ubuntu Linux distribution. It is originally designed to be efficient in screen space usage. This is due to its original target which was netbook systems. Netbook screens are typically small compared to laptops and desktop computers and it is important to have an space-efficient desktop user interface. Ubuntu originally used Gnome Shell interface but in November of 2010, Ubuntu community manager, Jono Bacon reported that Ubuntu will continue to ship Gnome stack but the only difference was the new Unity interface. Later on, in April 2011, Mark Shuttleworth announced the removal of GNOME desktop as a fall-back to Unity. Unity is now the main desktop environment of Ubuntu distribution. However, this does not mean that users cannot use GNOME desktop environment. Gnome Shell can also be installed on a Ubuntu machine as a separate desktop environment. In this post, I am going to address a few usability issues of Unity shell interface.

Browsing the web and the Unity Panel 

As I already mentioned, Unity was designed to be efficient with screen space. They added a panel to the left of the screen that contains some short-cut application launchers. In order to be space-efficient, when you maximize a window in your current desktop, this panel disappears and it moves out of the screen. By moving your mouse pointer to the left of the screen, the panel slides into the screen again. Unfortunately, this has a drawback when you are surfing the web. Typically, browsers have the left and right arrow buttons in the upper left corner of their window that let you go back and forth between the pages you have already visited. These two buttons are used so often by users. In my experience, when I use web browser in Unity environment, I tend to move my mouse to the left of the screen when I want to go back to the pages I visited before. Almost 50% of the time, this causes me to get to the left panel and launch an application. This is very annoying because you will need to close the application you just launched and go back to your browser. Initially, I thought this might be a problem that not everybody experiences but then I observed other people doing the same thing and that is why I think this needs to be addressed. I understand that Unity was designed to be space-efficient but if it is install on a desktop machine then there is no need for such features. The unity panel can have a button at the lower left corner and in case a user would like to get to the panel, they can simply click on that button. I believe Unity must fix this by adding a small button at the lower left corner of the screen or let the users move the panel to the right of the screen. 

This snapshot show how the left panel can cause users to mistakenly launch random applications due to its behaviour.

Launch an application twice from the Unity Panel
It is very usual for users to launch applications twice because they need two instances of the same application. For example, some users prefer to open two file explorers when they want to search in their file systems and copy files from one location to another. You may launch a file explorer where you find the files you want to move and then you can copy a set of files by dragging them into another explorer. Nautilus is a file explorer that lets manage your file system by going through your files. The Unity panel has Nautilus has a default application in its launcher list. You may click on it and launch it. The problem is when you launch applications from this panel then if you click on the sample application again, you are not going to launch a new instance of it. Instead will change the focus on that instance that you had already launched. The second thing that may come to your mind is to right click on the application's icon and hope that you can launch the application using an item in a pop-up menu. When you right-click on it, you have not so many options. You can focus on the application again or you may remove the application from the launcher. You can also quit the application. At this point you may give up and try to use your dash to launch a new instance. What if you don't know the name of the application. As you can see it can be very annoying at this point. However, the solution is to hold the left and the right buttons of you mouse at the same time when your mouse is positioned on the application's icon. This is a very unusual behaviour. I had to read this in their documentation to find out what to do at this point. I believe the pop-up menu that appears when you right-click on the application's icon must have an option that would let you launch a second instance of the application. This would definitely make it much easier for a new user to launch a second instance of an application from the Unity panel.

This snapshot shows the Nautilus application launched but as you can see the pop-up menu on the Unity Panel does not have an item that lets you launch a second instance of this application.

Global Menus !
It seems to me that Unity is trying to mimic Mac OS X with some of its new features. Not all the design decisions in Mac OS systems are perfect. Unity has introduced a feature for its active windows called a "Global Menu". Window menus do not appear in the window itself but they appear at the very top of the screen. I believe this is another effort to give more screen space to applications for netbook users. This is great for netbook users because the screen is small. However, this slows down desktop users. Desktop users with large HD screens need to move their mouse pointer in a large screen back and forth from the window to the upper panel of Unity. This feature must be customizable as it is not even needed for large HD screens.

This snapshot shows the new Global Menu feature introduced in Unity. In large screens, users need to move their mouse pointers back and forth from the menu to the window which will slow them down.

Dash Pop-up Menu!
Unity dash provides a nice and clean environment for users to search for installed applications and files on the system where users can launch these applications. The user can type a few characters of the name of the application or the name of the file he/she is searching for and the dash environment helps the user locating the file or the application. The problem is that there is no pop-up menu in this environment. It would be nice if right-clicking on an application could show some information about the application and its location in the hard-drive. This might not be as crucial for applications as it is for files. It is typical to have two different files in different locations in the hard-drive with the same name. When you search for files, the name of the files appear but you get no information about their location. Right-clicking on a file behaves the same way as it would if you left-click on a file. It basically finds the right application to open the file and then it launches it. Adding a pop-up menu or an information box in a corner of the screen could make it possible for users to be able to move over the files and get some useful information about files/applications.

This screenshot show the Unity dash where users can search for files/applications. No extra information is presented about these files and applications such as the path to the application/file.