Here are some usability related comments:
2006/5/31, Marco Gusy <
[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Grouping all progress dialogs in one panel doesn't make sense. When place several items together, Gestalt psychology states that people will tend to perceive these items as related. However, placing all progress dialogs (or similar dialogs) in one central place has no meaning for the user, since all those items in that place share no semantic relationship. The items in that central progress dialog do have a relationship, but it's merely a technical one, namely that all those windows are progress windows. Since the items in such a panel share no semantic relationship, but a technical relationship instead, will the user have enough knowledge to know where to find the dialogs? User testing would be needed to find out the answer to that question.
Another issue that has to be raised is modality. How would these subwindows behave to their parent windows? Since the subwindows are no seperated from their parent windows, the user will not have clear visual feedback of the status of a certain application.
Shrinking a whole window into a tiny menu item, means you'll be losing space that you could use to present information to the user. Besides this disadvantage, it does has an advantage: shrinking such a window will force the developer to eliminate all unessential information, which will result in a much more clean interface.
The disadvantages clearly outweigh the advantages (if there are any), so from a usabilty perspective, this idea will probably not be much of an improvement. If user testing would show that this idea improves an aspect of usability (such as workflow efficiency or learnability), then I'll be convinced.
Hi all, i'm a user waiting for the subscription approval, but I post
anyway to introduce this topic.
I would like you to take a look to this mockup i saw on kde-look.org,
it's a very interesting and innovative feature that would introduce new
coherence and usability in desktop applications.
I think this will also be a start point for a innovative phylosophy in
desktop applications, think to a program with two GUI's:
-the private GUI (the one we already know, main interface)
-the progress GUI (the progress/comunication gui)
The second one, the new one, would be a
communication/information/progress customizable window which would be
shown in that grouped dialog.
Grouping all progress dialogs in one panel doesn't make sense. When place several items together, Gestalt psychology states that people will tend to perceive these items as related. However, placing all progress dialogs (or similar dialogs) in one central place has no meaning for the user, since all those items in that place share no semantic relationship. The items in that central progress dialog do have a relationship, but it's merely a technical one, namely that all those windows are progress windows. Since the items in such a panel share no semantic relationship, but a technical relationship instead, will the user have enough knowledge to know where to find the dialogs? User testing would be needed to find out the answer to that question.
Another issue that has to be raised is modality. How would these subwindows behave to their parent windows? Since the subwindows are no seperated from their parent windows, the user will not have clear visual feedback of the status of a certain application.
Shrinking a whole window into a tiny menu item, means you'll be losing space that you could use to present information to the user. Besides this disadvantage, it does has an advantage: shrinking such a window will force the developer to eliminate all unessential information, which will result in a much more clean interface.
The aplications of this window would be infinite: download progress,
application warnings, stdout output, hardware (fax, cd recording,
printing) progress, simple messages (you have mail, kopete events)...
I see in this idea a great improvement in desktop "readbility"
The disadvantages clearly outweigh the advantages (if there are any), so from a usabilty perspective, this idea will probably not be much of an improvement. If user testing would show that this idea improves an aspect of usability (such as workflow efficiency or learnability), then I'll be convinced.
Marco
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