1 of 9

Need finding for Linux shell users

Team Name: What the Shell

Team Members: Gunwoo Kim, Jooyoung Lee, Suhwan Jee, Youngkyu Hong

​

​

​

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

2 of 9

Experience

Redesign users’ experience of

using Command-line User Interface (CUI)

2

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

3 of 9

Observations & Interviews

  • Major Target : Linux shell users around us
    • Students / NOT Students
    • Beginners / Experts�
  • Focus on : Inconvenience of Linux command-line interface
    • Purpose : Why do users use it?
    • How to find desirable command?
    • How users adapted to inconvenience

​

3

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

4 of 9

Observations & Interviews

  • Maltese (student / 1 week) - Suhwan Jee
  • Poodle (student / 2 weeks) - Gunwoo Kim
  • Shepherd (pre-soldier / < 1 year) - Jooyoung Lee
  • Bulldog (student / 1 year) - Jooyoung Lee
  • Golden Retriever (student / 3 years) - Youngkyu Hong
  • Jindo (startup CEO / 4 years) - Jooyoung Lee
  • Pomeranian (student / 5 years) - Youngkyu Hong
  • Welsh Corgi (student / 5 years) - Jooyoung Lee
  • Beagle (developer / 7 years) - Gunwoo Kim
  • Yorkshire Terrier (developer / 10 years) - Youngkyu Hong
  • Dachshund (developer / 13 years) - Suhwan Jee

4

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

5 of 9

5

A photo of an interviewee, Bulldog, using Linux Shell

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

6 of 9

Interesting Moments

  • Most of the users find commands by Googling
  • ‘man’ command is almost useless
  • Many users have problems dealing with ‘vim’
  • The big difference between beginners and experts
    • Beginners - can’t do much, even with Google
    • Experts - freely do what they want
  • Even experts use only about 10 commands frequently

6

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

7 of 9

7

A customized shell of an expert user (Photo by Beagle)

‘man’ command page does not support hyperlinks (Photo by Dachshund)

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

8 of 9

Needs

  • Get information easily from ‘man’ page (Current one is not readable)
  • Want safer commands
  • Know how to google when they need new commands
  • Learn more commands
  • Learn and use advanced commands
  • Use appropriate flags
  • Use shorter commands as possible
  • Get more feedback for their commands
  • Use mouse
  • Access folders with non-alphanumeric names

8

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding

9 of 9

Insights

  • ‘man’ page has very bad readability and lacks of functions (ex. hyperlinks)
  • When googling a full command, regular expressions are automatically omitted
  • Users do not know that what kinds of commands exist, not specific commands
  • It is much harder to customize CUI than to customize GUI
  • Many Linux shell users are not satisfied with the default shell
  • External commands are also frequently used, not only Linux
  • The feedback for errors lacks of information
  • Key mapping is not intuitive and inconsistent with other apps
  • The safety of each commands is bad; there is no ‘undo’ command
  • Experts are familiar with Linux shell CUI
  • Expert users usually has the way to achieve beginners’ needs

9

CS374 Design Project 1: Needfinding