[packagekit] usability bug / suggestion to remove potentially non-beneficial feature

[dawg]

Mr. Hughes suggested that I should send a note to this list for 
discussion. Originally posted to 
http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24188 ...

Upon completing an update requiring a restart, the user is prompted with 
a dialog box asking to "Close" or "Restart," but this dialog (and the 
entire update window) is apparently programmed to automatically close 
after 30 seconds (I assume this happens whether a restart is required or 
not). To me, this seems like a reverse feature, or however it would be 
called (I believe the FSF coined "antifeature" to imply something else), 
because I do not believe it contributes at all to the user experience -- 
except in negative ways. What advantage is there to automatically 
closing the window? (Or, if there is an advantage, wouldn't it then make 
sense to do it instantly instead of waiting and causing perceived 
inconsistency?) On the other hand, I believe there are usability issues 
when a window simply disappears unexpectedly, whether the user is 
looking at it during that instant or not, and especially because the 
user is being prompted for input at that moment (was the user half-way 
through reading the question? If so, this would be frustrating, and also 
could leave the user feeling confused or feeling like they might have 
missed an opportunity to make a decision they might care about (after 
all, they don't know what the question is yet)). The user is likely to 
think that the program crashed (and potentially that the update failed, 
especially if they were away from the computer or using another program 
at the time, or even more so if they switch to that window at the 29th 
second and it disappears before they even know what the message says) or 
that they may have accidentally clicked a button or key which took an 
unknown action. Even if the user assumes that the dialog was 
automatically dismissed (by the way, if the idea is for the message to 
be dismissed, it seems like perhaps it should instead be presented 
through one of the notification features of the desktop environment), 
how does the user know which action is the default? Anyone coming from a 
Windows background might assume the default was for the computer to 
force a restart, which could cause some anxiety or even lead to the user 
frantically closing out of programs. Finally, I believe that closing a 
window unexpectedly can disturb the user's process flow. I think it's 
important to keep in mind that users have different ways of tracking 
their tasks and "to-do's", and the list of and/or physical presence of 
consciously open windows can be among them (e.g. the user may begin 
installing updates in the morning, planning to restart during their 
lunch break -- but if the window disappears, they may have lost the 
reminder cue they were expecting and relying upon).

Anyway, my point is that the user should not be left to potentially 
wondering what the heck happened to their update window. Even if 
automatically closing is considered to be a feature to some, I believe 
the cost in confusion is a greater concern.