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<p>Wow, this thread got a lot of answers.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your suggestions and involvements. I'll
take a couple of days to collect your feedback, evaluate them, and
improve the mock-ups.</p>
<p>I'm glad to see that the majority of changes suggested are
related to content and not UI. I guess that means we all feel
we're on the right path.</p>
<p>Here are some initial thoughts and general suggestions regarding
your feedback:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><i><font size="-1"><b>WELCOME -- Configuring Thunderbird<br>
</b>What do you want to do now?<br>
1.Configure Thunderbird to work with an <u>existing</u>
email account?<br>
2.Have Thunderbird create a <u>new</u> email account and
work with it?<br>
3.Manually configure Thunderbird for more specialized uses?<b><br>
NOTE:</b> You can return here later to configure
Thunderbird to work with <u>multiple</u> new or existing
email accounts.</font></i></p>
</blockquote>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p>I understand the need of being as clear as possible, but we
should be careful in not turning every single button into a
paragraph. A good UI is understandable without over explaining
every single button.</p>
<p>Labels, titles, info tooltips, and descriptions, should be
short and on point, without being verbose and too long. Other
than looking terrible in the end result, too much copy will
distract and overwhelm the user.</p>
<p>Also, asking questions is not recommended in general. If you
open a window with 3 buttons, you know you have to click on one
of those. Buttons already have labels to indicate what they do,
therefor is not necessary to ask "Which button do you want to
click?". This is not a questionnaire, but a guided setup dialog.
We should present clear solutions not open questions.</p>
<p>We should avoid designing for edge cases. Majority of users
will write their email and password and that's it. If tech savvy
users need to configure something manually, the "Set Up later"
link to close the dialog will give them the chance to do what
they need to do.</p>
<p>Adding a "Manual configuration" button on first screen, or
"Import certificate", or something of this genre, will only
increase complexity and clutter the dialog for an option that is
not commonly used. Once again, we shouldn't design for edge
cases.<br>
</p>
<p>The "Return here later..." is also unnecessary since the
ability to create new accounts will be easily accessible in TB,
and this dialog will always be used. We could play with the idea
of having a final screen where we offer 2 funnels "Done/Close"
and "Set Up another Account". The "Set Up later" link is
explanatory enough to communicate to the user that this is not a
one time screen and they can access it at a later time.<br>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><font size="-1"><i>Sorry if this was already answered, will
only the account setup see an UI refreshment or whole of
Thunderbird?</i></font><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">
<p>This is a first step of an ongoing work that doesn't currently
have a release or end date. We will implement these changes
slowly and carefully, section by section, in order to make it
right and not rush it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><font size="-1">Option to use same credentials for outgoing
as incoming</font><br>
<font size="-1">bug 543827 -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543827">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=543827</a></font><br>
<br>
<font size="-1">I just threw together a mock-up adding two
options and uploaded it to</font><br>
<font size="-1">the bug above but essentially, it just adds
two lines below the</font><br>
<font size="-1">'Remember password' option, like this:</font><br>
<br>
<font size="-1">[ ] Remember password</font><br>
<font size="-1">[x] Use only secure settings</font><br>
<font size="-1">[x] Use same settings for sending mail</font><br>
<br>
<font size="-1">As pictured, i also think they (the two new
options I am proposing)</font><br>
<font size="-1">should be enabled by default.</font><br>
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I wouldn't recommend this. TB should try to do all this in the
background (which I think it already does), and not offer users
extra options which are already checked by default so why we
even put them there.</p>
<p>The manual configuration appears only if TB can't connect by
trying all the possible settings, and all the fields in the
manual config will be prepopulated with what TB finds on the
server and what the user wrote.</p>
<p><b>Closing thoughts</b></p>
<p>I understand the feeling of "we should add *this* also because
users will use it", but we should be really careful about the
amount of buttons, labels, links, descriptions, checkboxes, etc.
we want to add to this dialog.</p>
<p>We need to offer a few and simple options, and guide the users
where they need to go, not try to put everything on the same
screen. No matter how slick and curated a UI can be, if it's
cluttered with dozens of options it will only overwhelm and
confuse the user. We need to avoid that.</p>
<p>Not everything is a priority. Specific sections must be
revealed only when is necessary for the user to interact with
them. Verbose and descriptive messages should be optimized or
replaced by intuitive actions and icons.</p>
<p>Let's stay focus and not get sucked into the rabbit hole of
adding every possible option ever. Iterations and A/B testing
will help us improve everything we do.<br>
</p>
<p>Thank you again for your great work.<br>
</p>
</div>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
<span style="color:#666;font-family:mono; font-size:small"><b>Alessandro
Castellani</b><br>
Lead UX Architect<br>
Thunderbird</span></div>
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