Mimi Yin wrote:
I think this is something that mostly needs user observations. I
agree it's a sticky issue, but it was the solution we decided to try.
We went through a process. We considered many of the suggestions that
have been raised and we settled on the "checkbox on rollover"
solution as one worth testing in the field.
[...]
We understood it was unconventional, but we wanted to leave options
open to unconventional solutions
[...]
I think we should give it a chance to work or not work as well as
ourselves an opportunity to observe people using the sidebar and
collect feedback from a broad spectrum of users (especially ones that
don't think about how software is designed ;o) before deciding one
way or the other. More comments in line...
That's a worthwhile idea and I'm fine with that. What might help is to
adopt unconventional solutions in the rest of the UI. (Not that any are
coming to my mind right now though.) It's like UI in computer games:
game designers are free to adopt highly unconventional, but also highly
effective and often immediately usable, interfaces because it's
immediately obvious that they are not following standard desktop
application guidelines. But when everything else in the UI looked like
standard widgets, the icon's behaviour on mouseover looked like a bug to
someone who was just fooling around with the UI for 15 minutes without
reading much user docs or the functional spec. :-) Sorry, I may have
dragged this discussion for too long. I'd be happy to try out various
designs since this is the one time when Chandler can easily afford to
play with alternatives without upsetting an established user base, and
obviously the user testing that you've been conducting should be even
more useful.
Davor, I'm curious to know what you think of the insignia on the
doorway metaphor I proposed in my last email...
I think it's not a bad metaphor, but it depends on a) people approaching
the door in the first place; b) being familiar with the metaphor; and c)
the door recognizing when someone approaches it. A user will approach
the collection with the intention of selecting it (a), I suppose, so
that when the mouse comes over it the icon changes (c), and so (b)
remains the main challenge. Maybe the mouseover icon could be bigger and
show a square and a checkmark instead of a circle and a checkmark -- I
think would look more "selectable"? Or use an icon of a pin?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
