As near as I can tell, I'm probably one of the few (or maybe only one)
on the thread who has commercially/professionally dealt with the
consequences of a development group's "rash" UI decisions in a product
they support, and the types of users that come after you with pitchforks
and torches afterwards.  Let me tell you, it isn't fun.  None of those
types of users (the pitchfork/torch wielding ones) are on this thread,
not will they likely see this thread.  They won't be going to Google to
see why it's broke, but they are going to give their IT guy an angry
trouncing and be done with it.  It leaves the IT guy in a bad position,
and Ubuntu in a worse one ultimately.  A "minor" change that hardly
affected me at all, it's had a 100% negative (sometimes violent)
reaction from 20 users I've polled.   Although they softened up when I
said, "what if there was something useful replacing it?".  But if
nothing replaces it where is the user's carrot/incentive?  At that point
there is only anger...  Very frustrating for me since it makes me look
bad after having pushed Ubuntu so hard for the last couple of years.
I've been pushing hard on Windows users (who don't want Office 2007 and
shifted to OoO) to go ahead and switch, since most of their normal apps
already are dual platform.

For UI related changes, it generally takes 6 months to a year of study,
focus groups, marketing researchers doing blind studies on users, etc
etc.  Not cheap.  So far I've only seen maybe 3 weeks here of debate,
and still no tangible reason to switch.  We're still missing the carrot.
Unfortunately there are none of us on the thread who are "qualified" to
give research data back.  Why?  Basically we're all over-qualified for
this.  All of us will skew the results one way or another, not
intentionally but since we know what it's about and for, we will change
the results.  Better to get "blind" test subjects who have no clue
what's going on, or why they're getting tested, or what the testing is
even about.  It's going to take a marketing research firm, and multiple
test groups across the globe to get some data back.   Not cheap, but it
needs done.   Course, still need to figure out what data is being
collected, and why.   Which means the unknown "unobtanium" feature on
the right portion of the screen needs completed to a beta level...

-- 
[Master] Window Control buttons: position/order/alignment
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/532633
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