People like it simple and you’re making it difficult ….

“People like it simple and you’re making it difficult to use” – is what my wife said after she accidentally logged into my Natty Narwhal testing zone.
A completely Windows user, ever since she touched her first computer, she had never used/ heard of any OS named Linux before she met me. She knew Windows and of course Mac. All journalists know Mac, as those machines are heavily used in media houses.
My wife has started to use Pinguy OS (Ubuntu 10.10) on my laptop since last three months. She primarily uses it to check emails, chat / video call on skype and watch movies from dvds.
She was happy finding the launchers for Google Chrome/ Firefox/ Chromium in Docky (bottom, intellihide) and Skype and Vlc player in the Cardapio menu on the top panel.
Anyway, my point is , I can categorize her as a daily user whose basic need is to chat, email, watch movies and listen to songs. More importantly. she needs to find these things easily on the machine.
Now, when she logged into Natty Narwhal, she was completely stumped. The panel had moved to the left of the screen and there was no drop down menu from the top. She wanted to find a browser but she couldn’t. And that’s when the frustration started.
This is a perfect example of an average user who wants to get the job done easily and smoothly.
Now, one might argue that Natty is still under heavy development and it is stupid to give that machine to a layman. True, but the Unity launcher is working fine! Only problem is that it’s not in its normal place…. It’s been shifted to the left!