Font-Config-Dialog

GNOME offers a tool for configuring the fonts within the desktop. The benefit of a tool such as this is that users have the opportunity to personalize their desktops, in addition to helping users meet any accessibility needs.

Usability tests have shown this interface to be confusing. Users cannot decipher what areas of the desktop the tool addresses. Also, offering choices on how fonts are rendered does not make sense to users. In addition to the issues regarding content, the interface does not offer an easy way to reset to the defaults and preview any changes before making them system wide. The following use case reveals this issue:

• Brian has been working on his laptop for a few hours. He takes a quick break and decides to change his wallpaper. He changes the wallpaper and notices the “Fonts” icon in the control center. He clicks it and starts to play with the fonts. This is a good deal of fun watching his desktop transform from basic fonts to random wacky and totally unusable fonts. Just then his laptop powers down. When Brian turns the laptop back on, the fonts are all wrong and all he wants to do is put them back to the way they were originally.

We could argue that the use case screams of the flaws of power management, but the essence of the issue is still the same. A user can make changes that are not easily undone, which is a problem.

To summarize, the following problems need to be addressed in the font config tool:

1. No way to reset to default fonts
2. No way to preview and undo options
3. Unneeded options on font rendering

These are the main problems with the font config tool.

Below is a screen shot of the default interface for the font config tool.

coming soon...