Ubuntu One contacts, now with merging!
While we slowly ramp up to release mobile phone contact sync, using my own contacts as test data I realized that once I had merged my phone's address book and Thunderbird's address book, I had quite a few contacts duplicated due to them having different names with different information in them. So I had one of those "you know what would be cool...?" kind of moments, and started working on a feature that would let me merge contacts on the web, saving me hours of copy-n-paste.
A few weeks later, an initial pass at that feature has rolled out! Yay agile software development!
There are a few tweaks to the contacts interface, and you will see a new option:
So, for example, let's pretend you have 2 contacts that are the same person but have an extra name in one of them, one of them has his phone number, the other, his email:
and
We go to our new merge feature and select both of them:
Finally, we get a preview of what this will look like:
Done!
Plans for the future are:
- Allow conflict resolution when the contact has 2 fields that are the same but have different values
- Allow editing the contact in the merge preview
- Allow merging from the contacts page instead of a separate page
- Use this same mechanism when conflicts arise in couchdb merging contacts
Also, contact syncing from thousands of mobile phones will be opened up for a public alpha very very very soon. Stay tuned!
Research results on Launchpad icons
Following up on our survey on icons in Launchpad, Charline Poirier provides us with the outcome:
Edit 
: High level of understanding, but a strong association with "attention", "warning", and "danger". Might be worth modifying colour or shape to distance the icon from that interpretation.
Merge 
: Reasonable understanding of "merge". However, participants were not entirely sure if the icon referred to the state 'merged' or the branches themselves.
Remove 
: Icon strongly associated with "do not enter" and "delete". The interpretation "remove" comes only in third place. The icon is strongly evocative and might be better used to designate a more consequential or prohibitive action.
Remote bug 
: A reasonable percentage of respondents understood the "remote bug" icon. Many, however, did not. It appears that the key for interpreting this icon is the representation of the bug itself. Various potential states of a bug were suggested as interpretations. This icon could be made more explicit.
External link 
: Relatively well understood. It is worth noting that the icon has powerful suggestion of globality and reach (associated with translation, languages, internationalization, etc). It is a very evocative icon that could be more fully exploited perhaps in another context.
What next? We'll attempt to create new versions of the icons, run another session of user-testing, and if understanding improves, Launchpad gets new icons \0/
Launchpad is now fully open source
As promised, Launchpad has been fully open sourced (as opposed to the initial idea, nothing has been held back). Get it now, fix your favorite pet bug, and improve tens thousands of people's experience.
Mark Shuttleworth really deserves a lot of praise for this bold and brave move, open sourcing not only the code, but all it's history. It's a fantastic day today.
Update: yes, fully means including soyuz and codehosting, Mark has decided to release everything. The whole history is there.
See the loggerhead page:
Launchpad AJAX changing user habits
Check out what happened when AJAX bug tags editing landed in April:
Note that since Launchpad has the edge/production split, so the changes in the graphs are less drastic since a set of users start interacting with new code before others.
User Experience everywhere
About a month ago, I went to Canonical's office in London for a sprint, and made good use of my Sunday by visiting the National Gallery. One fantastic thing about London, is the fact that all museums are free, not just because otherwise a few years back I couldn't of afforded going, but because the fact that they are free gives you the freedom of going to the same ones over and over again, and just calmly visit the bits you're interested in.
As I was walking by, I saw a painting that really struck me. It was a terrible and dark dragon eating two men, one of them is in agony while it's face is being eaten off. Quite shocking:
After looking at it for a little while, I went closer to read the description of it, which unexpectedly shocked me ten times as much:
"This gruesome episode comes from the story of Cadmus which is told in Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (III: 1-151). Cadmus was sent by the Delphic oracle to follow a cow and build a town where it sank from exhaustion. The cow stopped on the future site of Thebes, and Cadmus, intending to sacrifice it, sent his followers to get water from the neighbouring well of Ares. They were killed by the guardian of the well, a dragon who was the son of Ares. Cadmus then killed the dragon and on the advice of Athena sowed its teeth in the ground, from which sprang up armed men who slew each other, with the exception of five who became the ancestors of the Thebans."
This got me thinking on how much first impressions are important in the user experience, but really hit me how much more important the actual content is. We tend to relay the content creation and management to "the marketing folks", when I feel it's a crucial part that should be worked on together to balance off the amount of text, with the tone in which it's written, and to ensure that we're adding value to the users' experience.
Yes, I'm starting to see UI everywhere.