Woot! Thanks all for your replies :) At least I know I am not alone. I'll paraphrase as much of this as I can into some feedback for our team.
Thanks heaps! On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 6:13 PM, Joseph Clark <jcl...@atlassian.com> wrote: > Hi list! > > This is a bit of an odd request, but I'm yet to find the right incantation > of search phrases that will yield results from the Internet - hopefully you > can help! > > There is a certain subset of computer users who, when reading text on the > screen, compulsively click or highlight text that they are reading on the > screen (I am one of them!). I didn't even know I was doing it until > someone pointed it out to me whilst I was pairing with them a few years ago. > > One of our in-house products recently shipped a new milestone version > internally with a new "feature" when viewing issues that allows you to > instantly edit the content of the fields on the screen simply by simply > clicking on them (turning the plain HTML into editable form controls > on-the-fly). This is pretty neat, but as a serial text-clicker, this > feature is downright infuriating. I was happy to put this down as either a > little personality quirk of my own, or merely some indication that I may be > insane, but a quick straw poll of those nearby finds at least 3 other > people who have the same behaviour, or some variant (one guy says he clicks > on browser windows a lot as a muscle-memory thing to ensure the right > browser window has focus). > > I'm trying to describe to the other team why this new feature sucks for > some people, but I have no idea if that "some people" is one in ten users, > or one in one million. Have searched a bit online for information about > this, but I don't really know what to search for. Does this user behaviour > have a name? Are there other people like me out there (hello? hello?)? Any > literature around on whether or not its a great idea to bind functionality > to an innocuous user-action like text-selection or clicking in an > apparently non-clickable area? > > Cheers! > Joe. > >
