GNOME Shell Design Principles

• Take responsibility for the user's experience

  • Design with understanding that a user's needs change frequently while they work and play.

• Principle of non-preemption

  • "Individual interactive programs operate in a non-intrusive manner with respect to the user's activities. The system does not usurp the attention and prerogatives of the user. A program responds to the user's stimuli, but then quietly retains its context and logical state until the user elects to interact with the program again..." - From Deutsch & Taft 1980 "Requirements for an experimental programming environment"

  • "...Human attention is the most valuable and scarcest commodity in human computer interaction." - From Horvitz, Jacobs, Hovel Attention-Sensitive Alerting

• Principle of Least Astonishment

  • Or "uniformity in command interface" - From Deutsch & Taft 1980 Requirements for an experimental programming environment

• Design a self-teaching interface for beginners, and an efficient interface for advanced users, but optimize for intermediates

  • Balance learnability and discoverability with utility

• Don't unnecessarily rely on metaphor

  • Especially mechanical-age, which may be antiquated to many users, and eventually all users.

• Less is More

  • Reduce visual, memory, intellectual, and motor work (and complexity)

• Be considerate and forgiving

  • It is better to offer to undo a mistake than to ask a user if they are "sure."

• The technology should act as a mediator

  • Be the vehicle, not the destination
  • Strive for transparency