I’ve been playing around with the launcher and app folders and here’s a slightly more detailed proposal for 19.04, which elaborates why I think it would be good for usability as well as visuals. It includes real screenshots from my own install rather than mockups.
Launcher
By default, my preferred out-of-the-box launcher only includes Suru icons. The Suru web browser icon checks the default browser and launches that. Right click options for the web browser icon could be: Change Default Browser; a small number of quick links (e.g., Google, Amazon, Youtube); and Edit Quick Links. That means the Suru web button is a feature rather than a purely cosmetic choice, and users may keep it on the launcher if they find custom quick links handy. EDIT for clarity: from the follow-up post below, “I wasn’t clear enough here - by ‘default web browser button’ I mean a shortcut to the default browser, which is Firefox out-of-the-box, but which the user would be free to change… I wasn’t suggesting Ubuntu could ship with its own browser.”
By default, the top icon should be the Welcome App and the bottom icon should be Help. I have no strong feelings about the rest. Of course, the user is free to remove the newbie-focussed icons and add non-Suru ones, but these out-of-the-box settings are attractive, uniform, and accessible to new users, with the Welcome App providing Ubuntu branding where established Linux users expect it:
Requirements on Ubuntu for this to work: a simple app for default web browser and the inclusion of the Welcome App at the top.
App Grid
The current approach of listing all apps in alphabetical order is a bit bewildering, and presenting a mix of Suru icons and non-Suru icons makes the experience feel more (rather than less) unstructured. My preferred out-of-the-box experience is to only have core apps, which should all have Suru icons, outside of folders - and third party apps with non-Suru icons in folders (I’ll explain below why I think this is also good for usability, rather than purely cosmetic).
I suggest three default folders for the first attempt at this: /Mozilla (Firefox and Thunderbird); /LibreOffice (Writer, Calc, etc.); and /MyApps, where the user’s installed apps go. The two company-themed folders will cause less confusion than thematic ones like /Web or /Office, because (e.g.) users who installed Chromium might look for it in /Web.
The forward slash is important because punctuation comes before letters in alphanumeric ordering, and this forces the folders to be grouped at the start of the app grid, rather than interspersed throughout. Any third party apps that aren’t Mozilla or LibreOffice (e.g., Transmission) can go in /MyApps to “get the ball rolling” for that folder.
I think it looks really polished:
/MyApps is a helpful name because it leads to an intuitive distinction between default apps that users might not be interested in, versus non-default ones that they choose to add and will look for immediately after. This represents a small usability improvement because users don’t have to scroll through a list of default apps like Tweaks, Language Settings, etc., to find apps they chose to install and intend to use. The extra click into a folder still represents a net efficiency, because the “All Apps” view should aspire for maximum clarity rather than minimum clicks (when the user wants the latter, Ubuntu offers two more efficient routes: the launcher and Gnome Shell’s Frequent lens). IMO, after just a few minutes playing around with folders on my own system, this is less formless and looks much nicer too, because it’s visually a lot more uniform.
Future iterations could be more ambitious and have /MyMedia, /MyGraphics, /MyGames and so on. The use of the “My” prefix means the user won’t be confused if core apps aren’t found in the obvious thematic folders. For instance: being core apps that ship with Ubuntu and therefore have Suru-style icons, Mahjongg, Mines and Aisleriot would appear outside folders rather than in /MyGames - but the concept of “My” (versus default) makes this seem considered rather than random.
Requirements on Ubuntu for this to work: a script to edit the dconf keys that control app folders in Gnome. The script should be triggered on first login and again each time the user installs a new app.
EDIT: Wishlist for/suggestions to Gnome devs: greater support and ease of use for people who want to manually edit app folders in the shell (drag n’ drop, click to rename folder, etc.).
So, if Ubuntu 19.04 adopted these suggestions, I think the desktop would be more user-friendly (especially if you progressed to multiple thematic folders for /My…) and have much better visual unity, with the Suru/non-Suru distinction being meaningful and attractive because it’s honoured throughout the UI.
I also feel that the new requirements on Ubuntu itself are very modest, because it’s one launcher app and one script to edit dconf keys when appropriate. Obviously I’m not a developer but I suspect (or should that be hope?!) that adding them to Ubuntu would be a small task and a small maintenance burden.