I was browsing looking for some usability studies on cascading menus the other day (If you didn't know, I hate cascading menus). I found this link.
http://surfmind.com/masters/screens/the_making_of_a_visualization.html The information that's on this page, and the visualization of it, could probably bring someone who's mind is on usability, into micro-usability. For instance, in the diagrams, the users almost always move the mouse toward the center of a menu before continuing. This is a strategy in menu browsing, and eliminating the need for it could subconsciously make the interface feel more usable. Why not center menus under the mouse rather than the traditional method of drawing it right of the mouse? The one exception for this of course, would be if centering a menu under a mouse would interfere with the visibility of the menu. Also to note, is the distance a user has to move the mouse to reach a new menu. Not only that, but also to reach the central area of a new menu. This increases the chance that the user will make an error, and also increases the amount of time the user takes to reach a desired item (this is why I hate cascading menus). Also noted on the web page is a strategy for moving the mouse such long distances in a cascading menu. When my mom's digital camera wouldn't connect to Windows 98, I gave her my desktop computer that uses GNOME. So I have to mention a few more things about context menus that she gave her a hard time. Mostly, she wants to be able to easily organize her photos in the file system. She blames her problems on GNOME even though she obviously had never done the same thing on Windows. Please keep in mind that all of the following is based on the Ubuntu Feisty packages, so if you can't duplicate it with the latest GNOME, don't shoot me. 1. She was confused about what the context menus were referring to. One solution would be to give context menus a header as to what they are referring to. KDE does this for many panel applets and the system tray already, but nothing else. GNOME doesn't have any similar behavior. It could also be considered whether sub-headers would be useful, but at this point I'm only recommending a header that states what the context menu is for. 2. When I was trying to show her how to copy/cut/paste multiple files at the same time, she continuously made the error of right clicking on whitespace and therefore lost the selection she had made. Considering how many files she was copying, this wasted a lot of time. I wouldn't immediately be able to think of a solution for this. 3. When she tried dragging photos into a folder, the size of the thumbnail made it impossible to see whether or not the folder was highlighted. I would categorize this as a bug, and I wouldn't know if its fixed because I don't know if Ubuntu, the distribution that I use for her computer, has the latest GNOME packages. 4. "Move to Trash" in the context menu confused her, because she is familiar with calling it delete. She was especially confused because I told her to "delete" the folders she had successfully moved all of the files out of because they were now empty and useless. I'm not saying this should change, though someone might have a bright idea of how to end this confusion. I can say though, it would have been beneficial for there to have been a visual cue to whether or not the folder was empty, as the folder she was moving to the trash was quite similarly named to another folder. 5. When getting the message that moving files to a folder would overwrite already existing files, she didn't know what to do. If I hadn't told her to say skip and rename the files, she would have overwritten the files with the same name. This presents a problem with recoverability in moving files. I would suggest possibly making a section in the trash for files that were overwritten from the clipboard and from drag & drop behavior. The other problem with the overwrite dialog. It does not guide the user through what they can do to move the file successfully. The user is presented with: Skip All, Replace All, Skip, Replace. Even worse, the user is presented with the question in BOLD, "Do you want to replace it?" which may have lead her to click "Replace" and permanently lose a large number of her photos. The mentioning of overwriting the contents, even if she knew what that meant, wasn't in bold. I would suggest displaying thumbnails for both files in the dialog that the user can open so that the user can see the difference between the files. I would also STRONGLY suggest giving the option to rename the file. This option should be failsafe, as it should not allow the user to choose another filename that already exists, and should inform them if they do so. Another option would be to automatically rename all files, such that on a collision with 00002.jpg, it will just name the file 00002_2.jpg, and on collision 00003.jpg, it will just name the file 00003_2.jpg. Anyways, hope all of this info is useful. Please don't call my mom an idiot. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list Usability@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
