Hi,
Am 28.03.2012 13:17, schrieb Aaron J. Seigo:
hi everyone.
please take a look at the attached screenshot of the activity configuration.
(ignore the rendering issue with the selected wallpaper.) on smaller
resolution screens this is what it looks like; with icon settings tweaked for
lower resolutions we get two rows of wallpapers and things look a bit better
but i think it is clear that there is room for improvement.
a quick anatomy of that window, moving vertically:
* a titlebar
* a text edit
* content
* a toggle button
* control buttons
it would be nice to limit the number of vertical pixels used so that content
space is maximized. it would also be nice to eliminate redundant and obvious
text. as such, here is a set of proposals which i will implement if there are
no objections:
* change title to "Activity Settings" ("settings" being less "tech" than
"configuration" and shorter, at least in english; use title capitalization)
+1. I would even prefer a title that integrates a verb, like "edit
activity". But that's a wording question. I guess we use more often
nouns than verbs... if we decide for one, we should apply it everywhere.
* change "Activity name:" to just "Name:". that it is an Activity is implied,
and is redundant with the title directly above it. the name also appears right
next to the buttons on the activity view so there is an evident corelation
+1. Maybe even write the label into the text field until the user enters
the first key? So we would save even more space.
* move "Lock as private" next to the Name entry. this eliminates an entire row
from the vertical space usage and puts all of the controls in one place
We moved it from up there to the very bottom, because it implicates a
second page with the setting of the password. To link this clearly in
the user interaction flow, we decided to put it directly on top of the
buttons, to show with the changing button label that one more step needs
to be done, to have a final private activity.
* change "Lock as private" to just "Private". the phrase "Lock as private" is
a bit awkward (it is not a natural phrasing one would use in conversation) and
specifying "Lock" speaks to the mechanism rather than the intention of the
user. the intention is "this is private"; the mechanism we use is "locking
it".
Before integrating this phrase we tested with a lot of people. We tested
different words and phrases like "protect, lock, mark...as private,
secure" etc. The result has beenthat most people preferred and
understood the phrase "lock as private". Here both results, the locking
of the activity with a password AND the encryption of the private data,
have been understood.
Only "Private" would not clearly communicate the underlying action for
the user.
one further thing i'd like to experiment with is moving the save/close buttons
into the title bar. some other mobile OSes do this and it would accomplish two
things: better use of screen real estate, make it more obvious to people where
these buttons are. people often do not find the buttons at the bottom; i've
watched dozens of people go through the UI and this is a recurring issue.
+1, also because the buttons are often covered by the virtual keyboard.
But if we move buttons up in the title bar, we should check that we make
this is a general UI guidelines and have it consistently in the system
on thing that would make this harder is that currently when marking an
activity as "private" the label on the Save button changes to a very long
text. i also question if this is really needed or not: mark it as private and
when "save" is pressed take the necessary steps for a private activity.
see above, we tried to make it clear to the user that without the
private-activation he can just save or create the activity. With the
private-activation he needs to fulfill one more step, which is the
password dialog.
p.s. i don't have locking activities working here atm, so i can't see if
there is any UI for changing the password, or if the password is asked
for every time a private activity is saved ... in any case, i'm more
concerned at the moment about the default UI.o/active
One thing in general: I am thinking about a while now about some kind of
wizard in this case: we could split those 3 steps into a small, little
wizard, at least for the creation of new activities. That makes it easy
to add different steps in between, like the private activities step ->
it would be a handy and guided flow for the user, where he can quickly
create a new activity. Maybe later we get even more stuff, like tagging
etc for activities, which would be convenient to add in this wizard.
But I must admit that for editing an existing activity, a wizard would
be strange.
So, thumbs up for your goal to improve the dialog (both dialogs, as
create new activity and edit activity are the same).
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