2008/12/23 Jacob Beauregard <[email protected]>: > Your idea is another example of premature design.
You make it sound as if it were a bad thing ;-) > It's not likely to have a > good solution unless you understand the problem. Probably not, but it's likely to get you to understand the problem. Early design is not meant to get a perfect solution from the first try, but to make clear what are the problems users would get and the needs that aren't covered by previous existing designs. As I said, my mockup didn't intend to be a final solution but to move people to discuss. Some decisions may be wrong (like diminishing volume in low-priority apps), but some others might by right (providing a simple widget for the user to control sound priorities). > The problem I'd have with your model is that in my own use of audio, it > doesn't make things one bit easier. The main problem you seem to have with my proposal is that you want secondary sound paused instead of muted, but the "pin" interaction (that allows user to set high priority apps with one click) is independent of how you define "priority" and may still have some merit. Changing the effect of a pinned application is a "design maneuver" that transform the old interface proposal into a new one - we can explore the possible interactions by changing an incomplete proposal one bit at a time. Designers will always have some concrete interface to ponder on, instead of discussing everything in abstract terms.. In this case, by providing an example of an interaction that handles complex goals with few and simple steps, I expect people will notice how much control they lose with automated sound changes, and how much work the user must do to handle more complex widgets. Think how you would like my mockup if applications without focus paused as long as an application with focus is emitting sound. Would it make more sense now for you? If you still find some problems, think of ways in which the interface might be changed to address those problems without adding too much complexity. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
