That's a pretty good idea.  Though, when a user is setting up a printer, I think they're normally looking at the printer.  Hopefully it has a label (though the label isn't always obvious).

I think the flow for printer that are not in the list need some work, here what I see

1- connect to printer
2- go to manage and see that my printer brand and model name shows up (great!)
3- click on printer name take me to a page that I need to select the brand and model (strange?)
4- select the brand
5- cannot find the model (confuse at this point)

a few points

1- it's good that the brand and model show up as expected (likely cros has no idea what I have, it just print the string returned by the printer)
2- it's bad that it redirect me to a page that ask me for the information that it just show em
3- it's even worst when I can't find the model (didn't it just show me the brand and model ?)

showing the initial brand and model is confusing to the user. If cros cannot figure out the brand and model it should just take me directly to the brand and model input page, if I don't find it there, I would just give up and that's that.

You are 100% correct about 1.  We just show what the printer reports.

I think we need some messaging on 2.  We don't say that we don't have an exact match for your printer.  Do you think a prompt with that message would be helpful?  A small percentage of users (probably 1%) might be able to pick an appropriate PPD to get a working printer.  But for most users, this screen kinda sucks.

Re: 3, if you see the make and model page, we don't think we can match your printer.  We've already tried and failed.  There's a small chance that we have the name wrong, but that's unlikely at this point.

weifangsun@ is there a UX resource we might want to run this by?

Yes, a better message would be good. I think it's more about messaging  and manage expectation why user landed on the page in #2.  We should also tell user that we try the config we have and failed.

For example instead of just return the printer string, we might print a message like "We found a connected printer and looks like they are xyz, click next to see if we can find the config" (I am sure someone can come up with a better wording)

Then when user click next show another message like "printer xyz not found in our config, please select and try the closest printer config.  This will not guarantee to work."

I am sure UX can come up with a much better flow and messages.

+jonann@ for thoughts on copy/messaging.

TL;DR - In one use case for printing setup, we direct the user to a dialog where they need to select a printer manufacturer + model value which likely does not exist in our list (but the selection is required to proceed with setup so we can't skip the screen).

Feel free to grab me/setup time if you'd like additional context!

@Weifang, do you think this super simple approach would work? The article tells how to add manually and when to try the "generic' option. Only downside is that they'd have to scroll to find right section of article.


Your Chromebook couldn't find your printer. See the "Add a printer manually" section of <link>this article</link> for more information. (or "for further instructions.")

article https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7225252?hl=en