26 Jun
2004
26 Jun
'04
3:43 a.m.
On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 17:23, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
I think the length and variety of responses to the basic question, "what
is an intuitive way to move a radial control with the mouse pointer" is
a compelling argument for getting a wheel mouse.
If the mouse wheel is not present, then you can fall back to whatever
behavior you want. Most people will just use the wheel.
Lee
On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 03:38:10PM -0400, Lee Revell
wrote:
It boggles my mind how little attention people who design phones
(ethernet/IP phones are the worst) give to usability. I suspect that
most of them don't do usability test one.
Designing for usability is not rocket science. For the phone example,
the options (in decreasing order of desirability) are:
1. A self-explanatory pictorial representation.
2. A text label.
3. An incomprehensible pictorial representation.
4. An incomprehensible text label.
Only 1 and 2 are acceptable. If you can't find an icon that clearly and
unambiguously says 'Hold' (for example) then you MUST use a text label.
The question of whether an icon 'clearly and unambiguously' represents a
function MUST NOT be decided by the designer's intuition, but on REAL
USABILITY TESTS WITH REAL USERS. Put a phone in front of 10 test
subjects, and have them 'put someone on hold'. 90% should go straight
for the right button. Otherwise your design FAILS the usability test,
and you need a better icon. Only when you have exhausted every
conceivable icon should you resort to a text label.
I think this is a lot of the reason European
(especially Dutch) design
is so much more advanced than American. In the States, a fire exit sign
says 'EXIT'. In the Netherlands, it is an icon that unmistakably means
'this way out', without any text required. This is *much* harder to do
than just 'EXIT' in big red letters, but required. If there is a fire
in Amsterdam for example, you will have people from 5-10 different
countries running for the exit.
Yes, that's true. I remember driving in the US, and how I found it very
odd for all the roadsigns to tell me in plain English what I was or wasn't
supposed to do. But 'graphic' signs can be completely useless as well.
At work I have a telephone with something like 20 extra buttons besides
the numeric keypad. They all have mysterious signs on them that defy both
my imagination and logic reasoning. I'd much prefer for them to be labeled
'Hold', 'Transfer', etc. than by the totally uncomprehensible things
there
are now. With regards
to radial movement, the only self-explanatory way to do it
that I have seen is mousewheel-on-mouseover. People will figure this
out with no documentation at all. Please make your radial controls work
this way unless there is a good reason not to.
If you have a mousewheel :-)