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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> there actually is data and research to back up what they are doing.

Oh really? There was data to back up that users wanted to start their desktop in Overview mode instead of the usual desktop? I'd be SUPER interested to see what kind of bullshit data was used, if this data ever exists. Right after this happened people created an extension to backtrack on this and this is one of the most popular extensions on GNOME extensions.

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From all the questionable design choices you argue about a good one. Starting in an empty space means you go to the overview to launch an app (unless you have hot-keys to launch apps which I think GNOME doesn't have configured by default).

So it both saves you a click/gesture and it allows for new users to understand what's going on.

My pet peeve is the recent move of the dash to the bottom of the screen, thus requiring users to first move their mouse all the way to the top left corner, then all the way to the bottom just to switch apps.

I cope by not taking my hands off the keyboard and launching apps by hitting <Meta> followed by the application name. You can switch apps by <Alt>+<Tab> and <Alt><Shift>+<Tab>.

Yes, there was data to decide that, you should ask them nicely on the proper channel if you want more info. Please avoid dismissing things as "bullshit", that's rude and it doesn't help the discussion. If you have any additional data to the contrary, then now would be the time to present it. AFAIK extensions are considered as a data point but are not the only one, any time there is a design change there tends to be an extension that reverts it so it's not much of a reliable thing.

> Yes, there was data to decide that, you should ask them nicely on the proper channel if you want more info.

I'm all for asking politely if you're going to ask at all, but... why should asking even be necessary? Why not just post the justifying data by default? That seems like less work than "data available upon request if you ask nicely."

I guess the reason that they don't just post the justifying data is that ... they actually posted the justifying data[0].

google: gnome ux research

[0] https://blogs.gnome.org/shell-dev/2021/02/15/shell-ux-change...

That post very explicitly states that it does not in fact include the data for privacy reasons. Privacy seems like a good justification to not release the raw data, but claiming that data is available is wrong based on that post.

In particular I see nothing about starting in Overview mode (the original question about data was about that), although maybe I'm missing something not being familiar with recent Gnome releases.

Well there is no marketing department, so AFAIK the designers have to balance doing blogs and press releases with all their other work which is not easy to do. It is a non-zero amount of work to explain it. If you just want to have a quick conversation about it and are interested to get involved with design then I think it would be faster to do that than trying to get them to write an entire blog article or something.

Yes there was lots of data in favor of that actually.

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