This was the biggest problem with the 'science' behind the creation of
the Ribbon. Although they used FITS law to decide placement they
actually misinterpreted FITS law which helps decide the travel
distance between common work flow and buttons, menus, keystrokes, etc.
They (MS) determined FITS law applied to all mouse movements
regardless of common sense or of consistency. When FITS law was
created it was for keyboard layouts and menu layouts which were static
and non changing and it did not take into account changing content and
in fact the developers of FITS law have stated that it is only a
rudimentary way of judging the smoothness of movement and energy used
but not an absolute law.
If you go through all of the tests done for the new Office UI and the
methods used you will find tons of areas where they made decisions on
layout and elements and made changes without regard for common sense
and in other cases without regard for familiarity and consistency.
That said, it is nice to see that they even took the time to study
these things and to research the users of these things. I just wish
they had understood the intended use of things like FITS law and
applied them appropriately instead of just changing things to change
things and those were based on a misinterpretation of the governing
rules.
"If you take something like the spacebar on a keyboard which comes
from the typewriter era. The size was determined by the common space
between two hands resting on the home row (ASDF). This does not mean
that all instances of a space bar need to be this size. The science
states that it requires less energy to use in the position and size
that it is on most keyboards with the hands resting thus, however when
this same 'key' the spacebar is used elsewhere it does not need to be
this size or in this place. When FITS law is misused than the space
bar will be in this proportion and placement regardless of use. The
spacebar on an iphone is in the same placement and proportion trying
to maintain this but does not 'need' to be so, whereas the space bar
on a blackberry or on an LG phone is completely different. On these
phones they have taken into consideration that although there is a
home row there are no fingers resting on it and in fact only a thumb
is being used and so FITS law would require the space bar placement
and size to require the least amount of energy movement for a thumb as
the input source. Both Blackbery and LG decided that most people are
right handed and therefore made the spacebar best accessible for right
handed people. The only problem here is that the consistency of the
spacebar 'always' resting below the qwerty keyboard has become as
common as using toilet paper and moving it in size or placement goes
against the common expectations of it and most people could not
readily find the space bar on an LG phone (which is in the lower right
corner). The question is wether or not this change is justified just
because of FITS law or wether this should not be changed because of
how common it is in it's normal placement."
This same argument should apply to disappearing menus and moving
targets etc. which the Ribbon is full of. Concepts like FITS law need
to be take in context and should never override common sense in the
development of standards.
My 12 Cents
Tom McGrath
On Sep 26, 2008, at 2:46 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
I don't have measurements offhand for how one should appropriately
weight consistency over progressive disclosure, but when I
corresponded with Tog a while back on a related topic (the placement
of dialog buttons, another story) he seemed to rank consistency very
highly, even above natural reading-order, with regard to control
layouts.
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