GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 730707
Account dialog - nickname field is confusing
Last modified: 2018-12-27 00:58:32 UTC
It isn't clear whether "nickname" refers to you or to the account. I actually thought that it referred to me, and was confused why it suggested Work, Home, etc. My suggestion would be to rename the field to "Account Name", and perhaps rename "Name" to "Your Name", just for clarity. I was also confused by this field being required. It doesn't seem essential to me, and it would be beneficial to make it optional. Perhaps the suggestion text could indicate this. eg: "An optional name for the account".
We could mark this as optional in the UI, that makes sense. I don't want to rename it to "Name" or "My Name", as that would be confused with the user's real name (i.e. what goes on the To: line). "Account Name" might work; I'm open to other suggestions too.
Another option would be to prefill the account name field with the account type (eg. "Gmail"), or domain if using "Other" (eg. "gnome.org"). In that case, it could go something like: Account type Gmail v Account name Gmail Email address email@example.com Password Your email account password Your name Jan Hendricks
This is an interesting approach. However, if we get into the pre-fill business, we need an algorithm that doesn't create duplicates, otherwise we'll be offering a nickname to the user that will cause an error when they press "Create". Perhaps we go with the algorithm Allan's suggestion, but if the service name is already taken, leave blank (and marked optional, as above). Finally, we might consider not showing the Nickname at all when creating an account, only when editing. That would mean the user's email address will be their nickname throughout the application unless they proactively change it. That would simplify account creation at the expense of an extra step if they're not happy seeing their email address.
*** Bug 736450 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
OK, you probably better know what is a duplicate and what is not. But please, while you are busy confusing users with (not) renaming account name into 'Account name', don't forget about renaming real name to 'Real name'. Sometimes things are already simple; the complexity kicks in only when you're trying hard to guard the user from things that are actually simple.
*** Bug 713850 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I like the suggestion in Bug 713850 - remove the concept of a nickname completely and just use the account's primary email address as the display name of the account. That would probably want Bug 767328 fixed however.
Changing my mind about nicknames bit. In Bug 714643 accounts are likely to get a "display_name" property - that can return the nickname if non-empty, else the primary email. This means the nickname field can be left empty initially, which might reduce confusion a bit since there won't be two different fields with the same value. So taking Alan's suggestion of using "Account Name" is probably a good idea here, but I also wonder if there are better places to let the user change it - directly editing it in the sidebar would be one possibility, and in the accounts list would be another. Adding a dependency on Bug 714104 since that's turning into a complete "Account Dialog redesign" ticket.
Remove bugs from 0.13 with dependencies on others.
Fixed on master by https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/geary/merge_requests/71