On Tue 19 Mar 2013 07:28:27 AM EDT, Allan Day wrote:
A bit of background:
The change during the 3.8 cycle was based on a couple of factors.
First, the logo interfered with the layout of the login screen: it's a
prominent visual presence that creates another anchor point which
conflicts with the other elements on the screen (ie. it is
horizontally centered, which clashes with the anchor points in the
user list). Second, the logo was felt to be a distracting presence.
We've made an effort to make sure that the most important elements are
the most visually prominent, and we want the primary interaction
points to be the ones that jump out at you. The logo was a strong
visual presence placed above the user list: this drew the eye to it,
making it the first thing you saw, and distracted you from the parts
of the screen that are actually useful to the user (ie. the user
list). Third and finally, having the logo in its previous position
limited the size to which the user list could grow when there are a
large number of users.
My preference is to focus the user interface on providing the best
user experience possible. That means prioritising the things that
people need to use, reducing distraction and making the UI look great.
The addition of a logo diminishes the user experience along each of
these dimensions.
The proposal to replace the logo with a simple string in the top-left
hand corner is intended to mitigate the negative impact of including a
logo while retaining a visual reference to the distributor. However,
the usability issue that Ryan brought up is a valid concern about this
proposal.
It has been suggested that not including the logo somehow weakens
distributions' ability to brand their products. My view is that this
is not the case. Branding is not the practice of slapping logos onto
products. Instead, it is the attempt to instill and promote positive
associations with the brand. The best way to do that, in my opinion,
is to make the user experience as good as it can possibly be. If you
diminish the user experience through the addition of a logo, then you
actually harm the brand: you make the product worse, and in the
process you make it less likely that people will think good things
about your brand.
I suppose we are at a complete impasse then; to me it is completely
unacceptable to completely debrand the operating system. You do realize
there are usability implications with that - namely, people don't even
know what they are running in order to obtain help with it or even
identify the type of system they are using.
You have basically posed here that there is no way you will accept a
logo on the login screen. How is a compromise possible then?
~m