Ibex Design: User Switching, Presence and Session Termination

“We decided to use the top-right location, because it’s one of
the key places in the screen that’s quick and easy to get to (you
can throw your mouse into a corner of the screen very easily and
accurately) and because there was a strong precedent in the old
Ubuntu logout button.

“One key insight was that we wanted to make “switching user”
less an exercise in guesswork and more direct – we wanted to let
people switch directly to the specific user they were interested in
rather than have an intermediate step where they login as that
other user. So we started with the Fast User Switcher applet, or
FUSA, as a base fr the design. Another key idea that emerged was
that we wanted to integrate the “presence setting” into the same
menu, because “going offline” or “I’m busy” are similar
state-of-mind-and-work decisions to “log me off the system” or
“shut down”.”

Complete
Story