Riku Voipio wrote:
The UI should not use a dialog if it ends up hiding relevant
information
below it... IMNHO current UI overuses dialogs. Just count how many
popup dialogs
you need to get a http proxy set for a new wlan connection...
I think Nokia has forgotten a crucial feature of GUI design in small
devices, which they had pioneered in phones: that the number of
interactions (in this case, taps) should be reduced to an absolute
minimum.
On my web page (sorry, I keep referring to it, but it's got all the
good pictures), I've got a classic example: the awful Contacts
application. If I wish to view the existing data a contact, I need
to do this:
- Tap the filter so I can see the contact, and scroll to it
- Tap the contact
- Press the weird ">>" button
- Click on "Details"
- Examine the data
- Click close
- Click close AGAIN
On the Address Book application on the Mac, here's what I need to do:
- Scroll to the contact
- Tap the contact
- Examine the data
No closing anything. Likewise if I wish to EDIT the contact in
Contacts and add an additional email address, I need to:
- Tap the filter so I can see the contact, and scroll to it
- Tap the contact
- Press the weird ">>" button
- Click on "Edit"
- Click on "Add Field"
- Choose Email
- Click "OK" (bad name)
- Fill in the new email address
- Click close
- Click close AGAIN
On MacOS X's Address Book, here's what I do:
- Scroll to the contact
- Tap the contact
- Click "Edit"
- Click "+" next to the existing email address
- Fill in the new email address
I don't even need to bother clicking Edit again to turn off edit mode
if I don't care.
The Newton is similar to the Mac here. And on top of it, on the Mac
and Newton I can *see* everything that's going on during this process
because it's not being obscured by a big stack of dialog boxes. The
difference is that Nokia has us wending through large collections of
modal okay/close dialog boxes when it SHOULD be using pop-up menus
and state changing buttons (like "Edit") to reduce the complexity of
the system.
I wish that Contacts were the only offender here. But it's not. The
company needs to work much harder at flattening the user's GUI modality.
Sean
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