The recent Ubuntu Developer Summit included a session on Canonical’s user testing of Unity and Ubuntu. Have a read of the results over on OMG! Ubuntu! Here’s my favourite bit from the introduction:

Although a small number of testers are used in the qualitative testing, they are selected very specifically to best demonstrate the target audience of Ubuntu. They are a mix of Windows and Mac users who spend at least 10 hours a week on a computer. They tend to know how to download music, attach peripherals and other fault sedate computing affair [sic].

Perhaps this is one caveat in the data accrued thus far: the focus has been with “Joe Consumer” representatives and not those more advanced or all ready [sic] familiar with Linux.

So the testing isn’t aimed at more advanced users, or those already familiar with Linux. I’d count myself in both those groups. Yet interestingly the main issues they found with with Unity and the Dash were exactly the same as my complaints. Okay, my list also add a few extra techy issues, but for the main part my problems with Ubuntu 11.10 aren’t due to me being an ‘advanced user’ who is ‘already familiar with Linux’ – they’re the sort of problems that affect even Joe Consumer.

The article tries to put a positive spin on the results, but I can’t help feel that in producing a system which elicits similar complaints from both Joe Consumer and advanced users, Canonical may have managed the incredible task of uniting geeks and noobs into one coherent unified group, bound by the issues they face using Ubuntu these days.

Unity indeed!