UbuntuHUD: full of confidence or overhead?

One day after the Spring Festival, a blog of MarkShuttleworth started to get busy in the Linux World. "IntroducingtheHUD. sayhellotothefutureofthemenu. simply put, the Unity interface of Ubuntu12.04 will discard the menu bar more thoroughly and transform the system interface into this: this kind of navigation method is called HUD by Shuttleworth (one day after the Head-Spring Festival, and the Linux community is busy with a blog by Mark Shuttleworth.

"Introducing the HUD. Say hello to the future of the menu ."

To put it simply, the Unity interface of Ubuntu 12.04 will discard the menu bar more thoroughly and transform the system interface into this:

498) this. width = 498; "height = 313>

This navigation method is called Head-Up Display by Shuttleworth, and the intention of HUD is to refer to something like this on an airplane:

498) this. width = 498; "height = 225>

It is dangerous for a pilot to look down at the dashboard while driving, so it is necessary for the pilot to give directions to the plane without looking down.

Shuttleworth believes that it is annoying for desktop users to find something in the layered menu options, in addition, different developers place the "preference settings" function under different menu groups such as editing, tools, and options, this kind of search is also an unconstructive challenge to users' memory.

So Shuttleworth said the better way is to "let the system guess what the user is looking for", that is, the intent-driven interface he mentioned in his blog, intenterface. The operation is as follows:

What do you think of the operations in the video above?

When I watched the video, the first response was: Shuttleworth, is it intended to change Ubuntu to a local Google?

The second response is: If Siri does this, it will become more powerful.

So Shuttleworth has long thought about it. In the blog post about HUD, he said that voice input is the next step (although the specific time plan is not mentioned ).

The operating system itself, like browsers and search engines, must be "forgotten" by users: the operating system makes users use various software, the significance of browsers and search engines is to allow users to access various websites. They are like fruit-loaded dishes and are containers. Therefore, there are many commonalities in design thinking.

Like the early development of search engines, users get used to the following entry:

498) this. width = 498; "height = 508>

Even such an entry:

498) this. width = 498; ">

However, today, many people access the internet like this:

498) this. width = 498; ">

This portal is combined with the browser address bar to provide great convenience for users.

Web Directory is now almost dead, and search (including searches in social networks) is becoming more and more popular. This is a trend.

From a certain point of view, in the desktop operating system field, it is very late to come up with this implementation of "guessing what users are looking.

Even for users, the desktop system directly says "I want to watch a movie" to the computer, and then the desktop system directly starts the browser (or itself is a browser) you have opened Tudou or Youku.

Overdo it?

Many people are excited by this new idea, especially those Geek who prefer keyboard operations and hate to click between menus with the mouse, i'm even more excited for such a move that can say goodbye to the mouse.

However, if you abandon the menu bar completely, it is inevitable that there is a danger of overhead. In the nearly 500 comments posted by Shuttleworth blog, some people also raised this point and thought it is best to coexist the two methods. For example, the user named Marcos Barbosa said:

"This function can be used as the default setting, but it is best to select it because it is difficult for tablet users and users who prefer to use the mouse menu. The new idea is good, but it would be better if there is an option to enable/disable this function ."

Yes, when the mouse appears, no one says they want to throw the keyboard. When the touch screen technology is mature, no one says they want to throw the mouse and the keyboard. Even if the Chrome browser is aiming at simplicity, even if more buttons are cut off, the small wrench will remain.

Different input methods have different levels of convenience and efficiency for different scenarios.

To put it another step, if the implementation of this HUD is not smart enough, it will go from the GUI era to the command line era. The core of HUD is whether its matching function is powerful enough, that is, "Can it guess what the user is looking ". From the current video demonstration, HUD has no intelligence to the extent that users can open tudou by saying "I want to watch a movie". Users must enter "tudou" at least. The introduction of Shuttleworth only means that "Vocabulary UI" skips the menu path and directly fuzzy Matches User input with potential execution commands.

This is a little worrying.

What's more, there are other problems for Chinese users:

1. To enter Chinese characters, we need to switch the input method first;

2. if the system does not know much about Chinese and the user does not remember the specific name of the command, it will be completely dumpfounded (this is not a problem that cannot be spelled out by English words, but it cannot be remembered; it may even be that the user who just started learning a software doesn't know what functions the software has ).

3. In addition, even in the era of mature search engines, the homepage of many Chinese netizens is still:

498) this. width = 498; ">

People who are used to searching through indexes can only use search. This is another inconvenience.

What did Mark Shuttleworth think? Does he have full confidence in HUD's intelligence, or does he intend to abandon ordinary users?

I hope Ubuntu 12.04 will surprise us :)