In a recent post, I introduced the concept of a paper cut as "a bug that will improve user experience if fixed, is small enough for users to become habituated to it, and is trivial to fix." Canonical's nascent User Experience and Design team is determined to identify one hundred paper cuts to be fixed before Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" is released in October. We have dubbed this exciting endeavor "One Hundred Papercuts." From the project page on Launchpad:
[One Hundred Paper Cuts is] a project led by Canonical's Design and User Experience team to improve user experience in Ubuntu by identifying 100 small points of pain for users, or "paper cuts", and healing them!
You can see the paper cuts we've found to get a better idea of what a paper cut is, or to start fixing one of them today. Here are some of my favorites so far:
Suggested output when printing a file to PDF is technical and generic "~/output.pdf" When you try to print using your PDF printer, the PDF created is named "output.pdf" by default and saved in your home folder. Even worse, sometimes it's named ".ps" — good luck finding that file! Let's give the file a sensible name and consider saving it to your desktop by default. Workspace switching via touchpad works badly Have you ever accidentally scrolled your mouse while your cursor was over your desktop, with desktop effects enabled? If not, make sure you're sitting down when you try it. Let's not make our beloved users nauseous. Width of notifications seem arbitrarily small notify-osd bubbles can display about three words before line wrapping occurs. Making these bubbles slightly wider will decrease strain on your eyes when reading them, and will allow you to read short messages more quickly. "Unmount" in volume right-click menu, is tech-speak and undiscoverable What's the difference between "unmount" and "eject"? Why do I have to choose between them when all I want to do is get my CD out of the computer?
We need your help! Help find paper cuts on Launchpad by searching through existing bugs. If you find a bug that you believe to be a paper cut, here's how you add it to the project. First, click the "Also affects project" link on the existing bug report:
Then add the project "hundredpapercuts" to the report:
You can report a new bug if your paper cut hasn't already been reported, but please do your best to provide enough information for others to understand why the bug is a paper cut, what needs to be changed, and how it should be fixed.
If some small usability detail has been bothering you release after release, now is your chance to step up and get it the attention it deserves. If you've never contributed to Ubuntu, or even Free software, this is a great opportunity to get involved and make a big difference — take ownership of a paper cut by discovering and documenting a great solution, or roll up your sleeves, check out some code, and try to fix a paper cut on your own. If we can find and heal one hundred paper cuts, Ubuntu 9.10 will surely be the most usable release of Ubuntu yet. Let's get to work!
Edit: Feature requests are not paper cuts. Also, please think twice about reporting a paper cut if it only affects a very small number of users; we've only allocated resources for 100 paper cuts this cycle, so we want to choose them carefully to maximize user benefit.
Edit #2: For this first cycle of 100 paper cuts, fixing a paper cut should improve the usability of the default Ubuntu experience. In other words, a bug that does not affect a default installation of Karmic does not qualify as a paper cut at this point in time.