Comment 244 for bug 668415

@dabisu; a good place to start for documents relating to user testing is http://design.canonical.com/author/charlinepoirier/ Of course we have only had a chance to write up a small portion of the user testing we have done to a publishable standard, so for the last couple of years we have done a series of talks at UDS discussing the user testing that has taken place in the proceeding 6 months and presenting results. Don't worry if you cannot attend UDS in person, it is also possible to remotely participate, see http://uds.ubuntu.com/participate/remote/ There are also articles written by 3rd parties about the user testing we do, for example see http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/11/user-testing-of-unity-reveals-some-surprising-results/ I hope these links provide some of the insight you are looking for.

@magnesus2; the cost is because adding configurability exponentially increases the number of permutations that need to be designed, user tested, implemented, bug fixed, etc... because everything needs to be designed, built and tested to work in every possible configuration. We are aiming to deliver consumer grade quality, and this is a hard challenge. If we are going to succeed in hitting this target, we have to take a hard line in keeping scope within the bounds of what we can achieve with our given resource and chosen level of quality. There are many other Linux distos that make different trades (and this is a good thing for a healthy open source ecosystem), but with Ubuntu we are working towards an emphasis on quality. However given the last sentence in your previous comment, I don't think you are really going to be happy with anything we do/say so I wish you the best of luck in finding another platform where you will be more happy. In the meantime we are going to stick to our guns and continue working to build out a operating system that has the quality and potential to take the Linux desktop into the mainstream.