Brad Lauster wrote:
Hi Nick,
I'm struggling to find the best way to respond because the fact is,
good software shouldn't have confirmation dialogs in the first place.
I feel like we're walking down the path of trying to apply all
heuristics as law, and apply them all the time. The above statement
("good software shouldn't...") is an opinion, not a fact. Heuristics are
guidelines, best practices, not law. (Though to be fare, every good XP
project has to have this same debate at least once in its lifetime...:))
The simple "fact" is that I never notice that the "Ok" button is on one
side or the other on one platform or another. I always click with my
mouse on whatever button says whatever I want. Does that mean that
nobody cares about that? No, because clearly Nick and many many other
people do. But flipped around, does the fact that Nick pays close
attention to where Ok and Cancel mean that every user is going to get up
in arms if we screw that up? No. And ultimately, is the placement of Ok
and Cancel a hard problem? I would hope that for the sake of this
argument, that's a No as well.
The real issue here is not the placement of Ok and Cancel, the real
issue is how closely to the platform do you write your XP app? I think
an orthogonal, but perhaps more important question is, how much do you
break ANY platform's heuristics in order to create new, innovative UI.
And if you're breaking the Mac's heuristics to try an innovative UI,
does it really matter if you're going to break windows and linux as well?
I think the perfect example of this, that we're all familiar with now,
is the back/forward buttons in browsers. When Netscape 4 (or was it
2/3?) came out, it had these funky buttons in the toolbar that when you
clicked once they did one thing, and when you held down the button, a
dropdown history list appeared. They did this on all 3 platforms and it
didn't follow the heuristics of any of these platforms. It got mixed
reactions. Microsoft iterated on this behavior and added an actual
dropdown arrow to the right of each button, and it turns out users
prefered that. But in any case both of these designs were obviously
breaking the heuristics of Microsoft's own platform. This new design
However, Netscape's initial innovation spurred development of this new
button-dropdown hybrid. This is now standard fare for most browsers on
all three platforms. In fact it has become part of the defacto
heuristics for writing a browser.
So my point is this: if we're going to break from the standards of any
platform, lets throw caution to the wind and break it everywhere... and
not be afraid of where the Ok/Cancel buttons are going to land.
Alec
UI designers should be able to either:
1. Make sure users can't do things that would cause them harm
or
2. Ensure that any potentially harmful action is readily reversible
Following either of these paths makes the issue of Ok/Cancel button
placement a moot point. But let's say a case arises where you
absolutely must have a confirmation dialog...
In this case, putting the buttons in the same place every time merely
creates another problem. That is, the consistency encourages the user
to form bad habits.
I have six SSL certificate warning dialogs that appear every time I
start my email program. These dialogs are useless because I no longer
read them; I just keep clicking Continue until they all go away. If a
new message were ever to appear in one of those dialogs, I'd never
know because of the habit I've developed.
Of course, if we step back, we can find places where consistency in
interface design can help create good habits, like always putting the
Send button in the same place on the "compose a new message" window.
I guess my point is that it's more important to understand the
phenomenon of habit formation as it relates to interface design, than
it is to blindly follow the norm. Many applications are as terrible as
they are because they've copied the terrible designs that came before
them without understanding the underlying phenomena.
...and now for some Friday fun. A truly useless dialog:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bubbahotep1/64547469/
Have a great weekend!
Brad Lauster
On Nov 18, 2005, at 10:21 AM, Nicholas Bastin wrote:
Button placement may be visual design, but it should be immutable
based on the platform you're on, because it figures significantly
into the 'feel' of the application. On Win32, the cancel button is
the rightmost button, and the OK button is to its' immediate left.
On MacOS, the OK button is the rightmost button, with the Cancel
button immediately to its' left. Application designers who care
about 'feel' have no latitude on the placement of these buttons.
Flipping them because you like it 'visually' isn't going to help the
user who has been trained to their position through every other
application on their platform. Button placement has a lot more to do
with 'feel' than 'look'.
--
Nick
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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
