On Thursday 07 February 2008 13:11:13 Christian Lohmaier wrote: > Hi Graham,
Hi Christian, Ga did the double post thing again. Time to unsub and subscribe the proper account Comments inline > > On Thu, Feb 07, 2008 at 12:39:53PM +1300, Graham Lauder wrote: > > On Thursday 07 February 2008 05:17:35 Christian Lohmaier wrote: > > > On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 10:30:25PM +0100, :murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote: > > > > [...] > > > > A quick mockup of some icons (these definitely need to be tweaked): > > > > > > > > http://www.murb.nl/extern/openoffice.org/iconsactionstatement/ > > > > > > [...] > > > But apart from that I really think that the proposal will benefit from > > > any type of icons. > > > > Sorry but I have to disagree. Icons are only useful for speeding the > > progress of returning users. A sign is only useful when the meaning of > > that sign is plain. Unclear signage simply leads to confusion and people > > taking to much time to interpret the meaning of the signs. > > "any" should not imply "some random image". > > > A good example is here locally in NZ. Signs in Maori mean nothing to a > > German tourist. Putting pictures in their place would be equally > > meaningless for that onetime user. > > Never been to a bathroom before? Incorrect example and the word is toilet. A Bathroom is a room where there is a bath, I doubt there is a bath in your office toilet. Americanism bred by prudishness and the fact that at the average American home the two are in the same room. Terribly impractical. > I wouldn't be able to tell whether it is for ladies or gentlemen if it > was written in Maori, but if it has a pictogram (=icon) on it, I'd > immediately know what door to take. > > > The sign, the translation or the picture only become > > useful with familiarity. > > Sure. And those phrases are so common, so wiedepread that there is > already a good metaphor for each of the points. Agreed that there probably are and as I said I have no objection to having them, but we have to be mindful of the lack of websavvy of some of our clients.. > > > The new arrival arrives at the page and sees some vague symbolism but he > > would have to read the action statements to give meaning to that graphic. > > No. He knows a download-arrow, since he has visited other sites before. > He recognizes the other symbols as well, since those look familiar > already. Again you make the weak assumption that our downloader is websavvy I made the point early in this discussion back in Late October I think that we had to cater for Mr Jones the New Businessman who just bought his computer and has had it connected to the internet and he has heard that there is an Office Suite that he can download for free. > > And I still oppose that text links are easier to understand. I heavily > disagree here. > Text only is boring, Rubbish Shakespeare used Text, Newspapers use text, the internet uses text. If you want to communicate you use text even in comics. > not-innovative, oldfashioned, etc It all sounds so terribly bad but if you take the time to look at the reasoning you will see that the sense is good > is another > position towards such a minimalistic page without any eye candy. > > > The question is: "Is not having icons a barrier" answer is No > > No. The question is: "Does adding icons help people to navigate faster" > My answer is: Hell, yeah! (if the icon matches the meaning). You make a broad statement that is an absolute but in fact your statement only applies to people who are websavvy, we don't have to concern ourselves with them because they probably know about OOo in any case. As far as our NON-savvy users are concerned, getting them to navigate correctly is more important than getting them to navigate faster. We need new arrivals to go to the page that suits their needs best. The directions have to be precise and clear because a portion of the people we are dealing with are not websavvy. > > There is good reason why traffic signs are all shaped (& colored) > according to their meaning and are not all uniform with text on them. Agreed but again you're missing the point if you don't know that the yellow pointy thing on the pole is a sign you have to deduce what it does. > > And the question is: "Does adding icons help making the page less > boring?" OK, the wording is bad as it contains the opinion of the person > who asks the question and suggests an answer implicitly - but everybody > is free to have his own opinion... Boring doesn't count in this case. One level further in, hell yeah it is important. But this page is designed to turn arrivals into leavers as quickly as possible. >People voted for this design, so > that's what will get live. Agreed, you may have noticed that it was a design from my original concept that uses good behavioural and pedagogical science. You say text is not innovative when in actual fact this use of text is far more innovative than Icons which have been well used. I think a better comparison is a news page. You can't represent a news story with an Icon, you use a headline. That's what the action statements are, a headline that calls the user to a particular action. Icons don't call to action, they allow user access to a previously decided course of action. If however our newspage has a regular column Then you can use an Icon to represent that to people who return often to that same column Let me just repeat the goal of this process that Louis put so succinctly into two words: "Increase Downloads" We will obviously only increase downloads from people who haven't downloaded OOo before. Those are the people we need to gear the page to. We must therefore assume a level of "Web naiivete" amongst these users and cater for them. I have no problem with Eyecandy so long as it doesn't increase the load time on sub 20k dialup. Although one should always be mindful that eyecandy is subjective so Icons designed to look good for one group immediately has the chance of alienating another. > > ciao > Christian Cheers GL -- Graham Lauder, INGOTs Assessor Trainer Moderator New Zealand (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org Phone DDI +64 7 886 8171 Mobile +64 27 494 4315 OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
