I've been performing informal drive-by usability with some very non-
technical people here in New York who belong in the "Mom" and "Dad"
camp and aren't particularly info-centric, but who are nonetheless
dying for a shareable, read-writeable calendaring solution.
The most interesting thing is that it's not so much the collection
icon swapping out with the checkbox icon that's the problem. It's
more the notion that clicking on the collection name does something
DIFFERENT from clicking on the checkbox icon. (Which speaks to
Davor's comment that maybe the rollover effect should be bigger
somehow. Though bigger feedback always needs to be counterbalanced
with feedback that won't annoy people over time.)
I'm working on visual tweaks that will make the checkbox icon feel
more separate from the collection name.
I'd like to do some more testing when I get back to SF on people who
are more computer-centric in their jobs. The users I tested still
don't really understand when to single click versus double-click
(although they all understood how to cmd-click to multi-select things!).
This became a real problem when switching between calendars in the
sidebar because they kept going into edit mode...which of course
wipes out the icon on the left completely right now and made it all
but impossible for the users to notice feedback in the collection
icon area.
I will post my usability notes when I have more of a critical mass of
data.
Thanks!
Mimi
P.S. I'm curious to know from people on the list: Was anyone simply
stuck as to how to overlay calendars or not even aware that you could
overlay calendars? Or was it more that the rollover effect felt like
a bug because it was visually jarring?
On Oct 27, 2005, at 11:24 PM, Katie Capps Parlante wrote:
John Anderson wrote:
Yes. Exactly. This is what I've been saying for months and months.
It was obvious...
If you've already made your point, then doing so again more rudely
does not contribute productively to the argument. Its much more
useful to clarify a point or contribute a new proposal. Let's focus
on constructive actions we can take from here.
I think we all agree that we'd like to do some user testing on both
the current sidebar and on upcoming 0.7 designs before we start
implementation. Mimi is going to proceed with that plan.
We're all too close to the design and implementation to be
completely objective (developers and designers alike) -- this is a
well known pitfall of application development. I'm confident that
we as a team can be open to what we learn from users and use good
judgement to arrive at a design that works for us.
Mimi and Sheila will get back to us with next steps for the design.
In the meantime I think we need to not get distracted by this
particular bug and focus on getting out 0.6.
Cheers,
Katie
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design
