On Nov 5, 2010, at 10:03 PM, Cédric Beust ♔ wrote: > > > On Fri, Nov 5, 2010 at 3:52 PM, Rob Ross <rob.r...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Uhm, maybe a really bad interface expert would say that. "Back" implies you > have navigation state, which is something the user now has to remember. It > introduces modality into the human-computer interaction, and that always > increases the cognitive load on the user. > > That's a nice academic explanation, but I don't think it applies to the real > world. > > For having been sitting in many, many usability lab sessions behind a one way > mirror, I can tell you that the Back metaphor is understood by a staggering > amount of users from all backgrounds. > > It's actually reaching a point where this metaphor is leaking into non web > applications, which is why you see it appear in more and more places (e.g. > the Windows File Explorer, most Help systems, Android, etc...).
I think the problem is that because the Web has been so ubiquitous, its navigation model has seeped into the consciousness of millions of programmers and it affects the way they develop even non-web based applications. And once users adopt this navigation model, they need "breadcrumbs" to help find their way back and forth along the "path". The need for breadcrumbs might be a sign that an application could use a re-design. It's like covering up a bad code smell with cologne. > > Modal apps like Web UIs, Dialog Wizards, etc, are harder to use than > non-modal apps. For example, iTunes is a great non-modal app (not the > *store*, the player.) I find a song by searching. I double click to play. I > can hit stop to stop. There's basically just one UI screen to interact with. > No navigating required. > > Interesting example because I have often missed a Back button in iTunes. I'm > looking at a play list, I insert a CD, switch to the Library, launch "Import > to my library", and now I want to go back to the play list I was at in the > beginning... and... which one was it again? > > With a Back button, the cognitive dissonance would actually be much lower. > It's the perfect illustration of "Don't make me think". > > By the way, I think you are misusing the term "modality", which might be why > we seem to be in disagreement on this issue. I'm using it in the simplest possible way to describe a human/computer interaction where the human has to keep a state model in his/her head as the software is used. The simplest example is something like Photoshop, where depending on your current mode (i.e., which tool is selected), clicking an object or using the keyboard can produce vastly different results. A more modeless example would be a simple text editor. There is no state to keep track of, as you type, your words are recorded. They're all there in front of you at one time (I'll grant the scrolling metaphor introduces some complexity), all the commands you can use to modify your document are scattered all around the periphery of your data, in menus, toolbars, and context-senstive pop-ups, etc. A typical business web app requires either horizontal or vertical navigation through a conversation or long running transaction, where data is entered or information is assembled in discrete steps. (I'm not talking about general web "surfing" where this is not really a problem.) When you're on page 3 and suddenly you need to go back to page one to look up something you entered there, so you can come back to page three, then you are experiencing the pain of this kind of model. And each page in the conversation looks different, buttons have moved, menus that applied to one page don't appear in another. A desktop app could be more easily designed to keep all that relevant information "together", either in space or time, and make it easier for the user to keep track of what they are doing. Rob -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to javapo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to javaposse+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
