Ubuntu Improves User Experience Via "Paper Cut" Campaign
Jun. 20th, 2009 by Christopher Tozzi
Ubuntu developers recently announced their intention to fix a number of minor but noticeable usability bugs, which they’ve termed “Paper Cuts,” in time for the release of Ubuntu 9.10 next October. This is a huge step in the right direction for Ubuntu, and reflects the kind of usability-oriented thinking that is central to making it a success.
The ten bugs slated for correction so far mostly involve ambiguous user dialogues or interface inconsistencies. None of them on its own is enough to turn someone off to Ubuntu, but added up, they detract substantially from the Ubuntu experience.
Additional bugs that have been identified as potential targets for the paper-cut campaign similarly represent seemingly trivial issues that, together, negatively impact the smoothness and professionalism of Ubuntu.
Three cheers for Ubuntu
While bugs like these seem minor in comparison to show-stopping problems like broken graphics drivers or missing wireless support, the Ubuntu developers, and Canonical’s “Design and User Experience” team, deserve credit for recognizing that issues that appear trivial to geeks can be major obstacles to normal people trying to use Ubuntu.
The Ubuntu developers should also be commended for resisting the temptation, all too common in open-source development, to blame problems on upstream programmers and refuse to address them. While a majority of the bug reports for the first ten paper cuts were initially dismissed as issues that required patching upstream, Ubuntu’s teams have now recognized them as problems that they can and must address.
Let’s hope this marks a new trend in bug tracking where downstream developers are willing to take on issues that aren’t their fault, no matter how trivial they may appear.
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Apple sell user experience. Perhaps Ubuntu have re-figured out they should be trying to tap into that too instead of trying to bring bleeding edge Linux advancements. The most important thing is to make Ubuntu stable, usable and easy on the eye.
At any rate it can only be good for Ubuntu that Canonical have taken up the challenge to fix these “paper cuts”. Text disappearing off the bottom of a dialogue box doesn’t stop you in your tracks. But it is annoying. So Well done Ubuntu and Canonical.
I agree with you Ubuntu doing this it is defiantly going in the right direction, to get Ubuntu to the mass markets.
A great project. Certainly they should be working on things like major video and wireless problems first, but if they don’t have the resources, this is a much better use of their energy than trying to improve boot time.
This is a good move from Ubuntu. Most times in life its the little things that matters. I hope they work closely with upstream in carrying this out.
I’m in love with Canonical!!!
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I have to join in with everyone else with two thumbs up. I think the little things can really be a thorn in the side.
Chris:
The actual round bug list has changed since the email announcement:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+milestone/round-1
I just want to point out that at least 1 of the 10 identified bugs in the email as a round-1 bug was actually re-classified as non-trivial to fix.
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/30739
and has been dropped from the papercut milestones completely.
But there are more that have been pushed back to round-2. For example this one from the annoucement:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/hundredpapercuts/+bug/383255
linked to the upstream bug:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=584846
This really raises a few questions. How much effort is being expanded just cataloguing bugs as trivial enough or not versus actually fixing anything? How trivial does a bug have to be to fix to be considered as a papercut? And more importantly can you really know that until you’ve put the work into understanding the codebase? And if you understand the codebase well enough to determine that its trivial enough to be a papercut, can’t you fix it even if its non-trivial.
In any event I look forward to seeing the upstream patch submissions derided from papercuts.
-jef
Bravo Ubuntu!! I am so glad the ubuntu team are now addressing this issue in an organized manner. I have been Microsoft free now for 2 years and I owe that to the Ubuntu development team. Good jobs guys & gals!!
I think it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Seems like they are trying to ‘tighten ship’ with regard to Ubuntu’s overall quality, and I’m all for that.
@aikiwolfie: I agree with everything you’ve said.
@Jef Spaleta: My understanding was that a paper cut would be something that doesn’t actually cause any major operational problems. But rather produces annoying artefacts like dialogue boxes being too small.
aikiwolfie:
Part of the working definition is an estimation of how easy it is to fix the ui problem. it has to be trivially easy to fix. Well how exactly do you define trivial? At least one of the round 1 bugs was dropped from consideration after it was deemed too complicated to address.
And then there is this bug…
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-keyring/+bug/162710
Marked as already fixed and slated as a round 2 papercut..which is a little disingenuous as it was actually decided it was “too complex” to fix as part of papercuts and it ends up being fixed regardless of its status as a papercut candidate. Even the papercut project drivers can’t seem to self-consistently agree as to what is and is not easy enough to fix. I can’t really see how its fair to include this particular fixed bug in the papercut performance stats when it was thrown out of the papercut tag pool previously…seems like the people driving the papercuts project are already padding their performance statistics 1 week into the project. Oh well.
-jef
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Congratulations, we will be expecting more from you guys!
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