Jan Paul Posma wrote: >> I completely missed the "You can edit the article below, by clicking on >> blue elements in the page." line. Only found after thinking "this needs >> some kind of notice on how to edit, since it's not clear what to do to >> change the page...". > > in usability testing I also found that people don't read texts like that at > all. >That's one of the reasons I removed the different edit modes. It was also clear, > however, that just by moving the mouse over the screen and seeing text being > highlighted, > there wasn't any need to read that kind of notices, as all users understood > the concept > very quickly. After that they would search for a save button, and would find > the publish > button after looking around for a bit.
That's precisely the kind of things you want to find out from a usability study. That's why I reported it, not only to show the world how dumb I am :) My eyes moved from "Awesome, you are editing Wikipedia!" to "Can you briefly describe the changes you're making?" completely missing it on the first scan. Worse, I also wondered for a few seconds where was the edit box. You need to move the mouse and click to really be sure you're doing it the right way. Having the text about blue elements on a (lighter) blue box may not be a good idea. A few other improvements: When you open the "line editor" you get the options 'Preview' and 'Cancel'. It's a bit puzzling not having a button to Save, so I would rename the first one to "Change", and maybe delay showing the Publish button until you have done one Change. That needs testing with longer articles, though. Although that would also allow us to reuse the upper space for both telling them to click lines, and -after they discover it- showing the "Remember to press Publish". _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
