elementary
Greeter displays user's wallpaper to other people
This is a UX remark in response to the call for testing on Reddit.
As a user picking a desktop wallpaper, I ~am currently~ used to be concerned with only one question:
- How does the wallpaper look on my desktop?
Since the new greeter shows users' wallpapers behind their avatar new considerations are introduced to my choice of wallpaper:
- Is the wallpaper aesthetically pleasing with my avatar in front of it? Taking this question serious may be ruling out many wallpapers. Some will be too detailed compared to the avatar. Others may have important details in the spot where the avatar's circle would go. Another issue may be that those who would want to check for this would have to through the steps: change wallpaper, lock account, check looks, log back in, and repeat.
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How do I feel about this wallpaper representing me?
- This may be especially relevant since the wallpaper claims more screen space than the actual avatar the user has already chosen to represent them.
- ~Users who would have previously chosen a very personal or otherwise sensitive image for a wallpaper may now feel uncomfortable doing so.~ As @cassidyjames points out below, this would have been an issue with the old Greeter as well.
- Users who used to have their desktop display a picture of a loved one, now have to choose if they want the face of another person displayed to represent them, possibly claiming more screen space than their own face within the avatar.
- Should I now change my wallpaper as little as possible? Users who want to keep their appearance consistent to others may now feel reluctant to change their wallpaper too often. This may be a concern especially to those who would otherwise like to set up a (live) wallpaper that changes every hour.
Because of Twitter and Facebook some users may not be new to the idea of choosing an image to go with/behind their avatar. This is the first time however, that I have seen it combined with a choice of wallpaper. Because I believe each application of the wallpaper image has its own set of considerations, I would suggest an option to disable the extra picture behind the avatar, and/or an option for users to choose it separately from their wallpaper. (Ideally the latter would include a preview that also shows the avatar, though that would require more extensive changes.)
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A user who had been testing the new Greeter for some time now has asked me for a reminder on the current lock screen's use of user wallpapers.
As far as I know, the current lock screen does not display any user wallpapers. It displays users with their avatar and name only. It does have a wallpaper itself, for which it uses the default Pablo Garcia Saldana wallpaper.
If you remember the old Greeter's background matching your personal wallpaper, you may have achieved this through some hacking. Also some comments in that thread remark that the old Greeter was supposed to switch between user wallpapers. If that is correct, you may also have spotted user wallpapers in the old Greeter, but that feature may be broken.
The current stable Greeter does indeed show user wallpapers. This is not a functional change.
@cassidyjames Thanks for the clarification!
In that case any worries about wallpapers being inappropriate for the Greeter would not be new.
Here's a (very high tech) screenshot that illustrates some of the points above.
On the left we see Forrest. Or... actually mostly his girlfriend, Jewel. Then there's me logging in — I've got kind of a boring wallpaper — and next to me I notice Peter is a fan of anime. (Initially I thought he might be ashamed to know that I had seen his wallpaper, but it was just pointed out by @cassidyjames that this is not new, so Peter probably doesn't mind. ;) ) On the far right there's Thelma. She has a really nice picture of her car, which works great as a wallpaper, but sadly doesn't work as well in Greeter, since her avatar is in front of it.
GNOME appears to be addressing this with a sort of mockup of the wallpaper on the greeter within the settings pane.
If that's an approach we'd want to take, this issue should be moved to elementary/switchboard-plug-pantheon-shell. Thoughts from @elementary/ux?
There is already an issue opened here: https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-pantheon-shell/issues/28
Close as duplicate?
@danrabbit That issue does indeed address an important part of my suggestion: the option to change the lock screen image separately.
I think we can close this one as a duplicate.
@danrabbit well, I know that's a feature request but what I was specifically addressing here was a way to inform users their picked wallpaper will show up on the lockscreen as well, along with trying to address the specific complaints raised here about not knowing how it will look. So that's separate from the ability to set a completely different wallpaper.
Good point. Having a single image picker that clearly displays both ways the image will be used (wallpaper and Greeter image) would be a different solution than having two separate image pickers, one for the wallpaper and one for the Greeter.
Should this issue be moved to https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-pantheon-shell/ either way?