Have a background image that feels less old-fashioned and nerdy
I've heard similar feedback about a first impression of Tails several times in the past month already:
Tails looks minimal and nerdy:
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Lucas told me that he liked:
The minimalist interface. I'm fed up with the thousands of notifications of Windows, the popups, news, ads, weather apps, etc.
I like that everything was a bit square. It felt like the 90's, without so many animations and things. Tails has this aesthetic clarity, like in video games where aesthetics support clarity, playability, and understanding of what you are doing.
For example, the cursor goes above the different elements without animations or that you can only see one thing at a time and not multiple layers of windows.
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During #18784 (closed), commented on the interface, while waiting for a dead slow progress bar (#19173 (closed)), saying:
The interface is very minimalist. The plain blue screen. It feels like I'm opening a different computer after I restarted. I'm in another kind of Mac. It feels like I'm entering a different universe. This minimalist thing reminds me a lot of the aesthetics of a programming interface and a safe place. If I restarted and it looked like Mac, I might mistake one for the other. Now the distinction is very clear.
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During the workshop at Netzwerk Recherche, the only PC user also commented on the minimalist and nerdy look, though I don't have an exact quote.
I'm taking these comments with a grain of salt, because people might have toned down to sound more socially acceptable when talking to me as a Tails developer. But it seems to me that, going back to our values and style, and in terms of emotions:
- Minimalist, clear, distinct, and safe are things that we want to keep
- Old-fashioned and nerdy are things that we should get rid of
Changing the look and feel of GNOME would be quite a lot of work, but changing our background image could be quite easy and might affect these perception a lot already.
- Tails/Tor icons are mostly purple and are clashing more and more with blue background and blue theme of GNOME.
I think that we should only work on this after we have #7148 to make it easier to do this change. Then:
- Brainstorm a couple of possible new background images, building up on this feedback.
- Test these few ideas, either
- Qualitatively during usability tests
- Quantitatively through a survey using the Microsoft Desirability Toolkit: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/microsoft-desirability-toolkit/
- Consider using a custom theme with a color scheme that works better with purple than the default blue theme. This might also be better combined with #7148.