Jumping in here without reading the whole thread....
You could consider doing something fun with the button, and really
centering the experience around it. For me, clicking that button is
my measure of progress; clicking it is always satisfying. Something
like "DONE!" or "MELKED!" might be a fun to explain and highlight that
part of the workflow.
Nick
On Sep 16, 2008, at 5:52 PM, Luke Tucker wrote:
I think "hiding" does have a learning curve no matter how we choose
to present it and overall we need better materials and
explanations. Lately, I've been thinking a short screencast would
go a long way for a lot of the kookier bits of melkjug's UI.
That said, for me, of all the alternatives "a button with the word
hide on it" is probably the clearest we can be for an initial
experience, followed by "x-as-in-close" (say... a non-red X).
Lightbulb on/off is fine once you know what it does, but for me it
initially says "tip" or "information" without suggesting action. I
agree "x-as-in-delete" suggests too much overall.
I'm willing to give "a button with the word hide on it" a go as long
as it isn't ugly and distracting. Longer term, I'm concerned that
even presented with the word "hide", it's not initially obvious why
you would want to do that anyway...
- Luke
On Sep 16, 2008, at 12:37 PM, Sonali Sridhar wrote:
I agree with Phil on this - I dont think its worth going down the
complex route of symbols (the eye, bulb etc.) as its really not
universal. Just the simple word "HIDE" will be helpful. I think its
important that we start moving away from "X" as that really might
make the user feel like they are deleting the reading vs. closing it.
On Sep 16, 2008, at 12:31 PM, Philip Ashlock wrote:
I'd be in favor of a button that just read "Hide" over an "X", the
button could possibly be styled the same way the "Edit" button for
filters currently is.
Rolando Penate wrote:
Though I certainly think it is clever, I can see how the
lightbulb could be confusing. For clarity, I suppose what we're
looking for here is a 'hide' metaphor then?
On Sep 16, 2008, at 12:18 PM, Philip Ashlock wrote:
I don't think this can be accurately tested until there's some
provision for explicitly explaining what the lightbulb means and
does (this could be a tooltip of some sort on hover as well as a
bold simple explanation when someone is first learning how to
use the site). The problem with the lightbulb is that it
represents an action that people rarely need to conceptualize,
so it's nearly impossible to symbolize it in an intuitive way
without that little hump of a learning curve. An "X" is a very
common symbol that represents an action that people use all the
time and intuitively means delete when in the context of a list
of content and close in the context of a UI element like a
window or a modal dialogue.
Joshua Bronson wrote:
Yesterday Julia and I went over the Melkjug demo we'll be
giving to CMU students on Thursday. It turns out I'm not the
only one without enough imagination for the click-the-lighbulb-
to-close metaphor to make immediate sense. I suppose that
brings us up to $0.04 in the lets-just-stick-to-the-good-old-
fashioned-tried-and-true-x pot?
--
Nick Grossman
The Open Planning Project -- http://topp.openplans.org
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(917) 825-6590
