Use cases can help a lot both when creating and evaluating a design.
The usability expert is supposed to know as much as possible of the
application context while performing the heuristic evaulation.
Wikipedia explains it better than me:
"Often the heuristic evaluation is conducted in the context
On 15 May 2010 18:35, Allan Day wrote:
> I'd also like to hear other opinions on this (current screenshots are
> here [1], proposed mockups are here [2]).
> [1] http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/Screenshots
> [2] http://live.gnome.org/DejaDup/Design/Profiles#Design_C
Do you have a list with a summary
On 14 May 2010 13:29, Michael Terry wrote:
> Do you all have a favorite Mockup/GUI Prototyping/Wireframe tool? I'd
> like Free, but am OK with free.
>
> The only one I've been able to find is Pencil [1] but that just
> crashes for me on startup. I know some people use Balsamiq Mockups
> [2], but
On 21 April 2010 22:46, Allan Day wrote:
> I'm still not entirely sure about the practical benefits of sliders, but
> they may have non-practical advantages: they can look nice, and I
> suspect people like them as something that they can play with. They can
> be a nice change from the usual kinds o
>
> - With a UI consisting just of two big buttons, the main window should
> not be resizable, since huge buttons look odd. In the same vein, the
> assistant windows should probably not be resizable.
...
> - The button labels should probably have ellipses to indicate that
> there is a dialog coming
There are at least two ways to prevent users being confused by this feature,
without removing it completely:
- Provide a more prominent visual feedback when it's activated, so that if
it's by accident the user will understand what happened. Instead of just an
instant unexpected change of the compl
On 10 February 2010 15:38, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 14:58 +0100, Diego Moya wrote:
>
> > - they still program using the interaction techniques of the late 70s
> > (main application event loops, event-based triggering of subroutines,
> > and throwing
On 10 February 2010 08:17, Allan Caeg wrote:
> Hello Usability People,
>
> I stumbled upon Matt Asay's article named The application is the new
> operating system http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10448883-16.html . I
love
> the fact that a guy who think this way Canonical's new COO. This is what
>
I'd like to have a feature for bookmarks on frames, so that those
bookmarks are shown for a few seconds during video replay as a sort of
"close captioning" or balloons.
The technique called "communicability evaluation" uses tags to
annotate particular moments in the user test where specific types
2009/12/10 I don't see how using such a system for usability complaints could ever
> possibly work, as they will always take a lower priority to bugs, and I
> don't think we'll ever see a situation where bugs will all be fixed.
The "one-hundred papercuts" project by the Ubuntu crew did the
oppos
2009/12/9 Lincoln Yeoh wrote:
> At 07:34 PM 12/9/2009, kerberos wrote:
> I think in many cases having/requiring the user/"bug" submitter "talk"
> directly to the developer may not be the best way of doing things. And
> instead someone else should be between the two.
>
> So I suggest that this sort
2009/7/21 Mackenzie Morgan :
> Er...I thought Gentium was considered a humanist font? That's definitely a
> serif font.
:-P
What part of "people like me who don't know a lot about typefaces"
didn't you get? ;-)
I got all my knowledge about sans-serif classes at the Wikipedia page:
http://en.wiki
I'd like to see fonts classified by type category:
- Serif vs sans,
- old-style, modern, script and display typefaces in serif,
- grotesque, realist, humanist and geometric in sans-serif,
- high vs low readability
- professional vs amateur
This would greatly help people like me who don't know a l
2009/2/25 Philip Ganchev wrote:
> "What if you want three levels" of organization (tabs, windows,
> workspaces)? Well, I tend to think that having more levels complicates
> the mental model and also requires more time for habituation.
It can be done without those problems, though. Have you seen th
Hi Anton,
2009/4/14 Anton Kerezov :
> Right now this is just an idea I have. With it I try to improve the
> useless monotonous (repeated) actions done in order to access some
> submenus (we are not talking about shortcuts but about the visual side)
> as well as to innovate on the user interaction
2008/12/23 Jacob Beauregard :
> 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 no
2008/12/16 Jacob Beauregard :
> It looks functional but confusing.
Ok, I didn't want it to use the look of the standard slider control
because it doesn't show which side is "high" and which one is "low".
Thinking of it, the slider control I've always preferred is the
"triangle", like the one in MPl
On 13/12/2008, Jacob Beauregard wrote:
> Volume has too many personal and environmental influences to create an
> interface simpler than letting the user directly control the volume. I
> believe I've already listed off quite a few of them.
Yeah, but the trick is in how we define the "control" n
On 13/12/2008, Jacob Beauregard wrote:
> Volume has too many personal and environmental influences to create an
> interface simpler than letting the user directly control the volume. I
> believe I've already listed off quite a few of them.
Yeah, but the trick is in how we define "control". Just
2008/12/12 Dokuro
> Diego Moya
> they only way to make the hole interface make changes easily for
> regular users, is to create fixed preferences defaults for typically
> installed applications
> this way you can have ppl to select:
> "working",
> "watching
Now that we have some more or less clear scenarios, the first design step
should be defining a list user needs, before we think of any possible
controls to cover them. These are the ones I've identified:
* Current application is too loud -> only emergency case, there should be a
quick access to
On 06/12/2008, Kirk Bridger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I think we have a basic question here that nobody is really asking: are
> users going to want to adjust volume per app? Yes, I know some of us may,
> but would users really use it?
>
I'd say no, most of the time. It only makes sense in spe
2008/12/5 Ross Burton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Fri, 2008-12-05 at 12:25 +0100, Diego Moya wrote:
> > - Play all sounds at the system volume.
> > - Diminish all sounds except for the current application (default
> > option).
> > - Mute completely all sounds e
Reflecting on all this, maybe we are overthinking the problem. The most
common scenario only requires this system-wide options:
- Play all sounds at the system volume.
- Diminish all sounds except for the current application (default option).
- Mute completely all sounds except for the current app
2008/12/5 Alex Railean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Diego,
>
>
> I think it is more reasonable to check which application is in the
> foreground and make a decision based on that, without waiting for the
> user to choose something from a list.
>
Good point. But in that case,
- how would selecting an ap
2008/12/4 Mackenzie Morgan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Thu, 2008-12-04 at 17:37 +0100, Diego Moya wrote:
> > And this is how it would be used in applications that require direct
> > sound input, like the media player:
> > http://www.imagebam.com/image/920a1620009224
>
&
ultimedia"
category) and the combo box would instantly change to a different profile.
The configuration dialog for scenarios should be open through an item in the
standard windows menu.
2008/12/4 Diego Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> And an idea to introduce the controls for vo
Oops - the "open" panel should include application names :-)
The list of applications is just the ones pertaining to the selected
category in the ordered list.
Opened:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/93223420003157
Closed:
http://www.imagebam.com/image/2229a720002648
2008/12/4
2008/12/4 Pedro Maurício Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> >> - Several priorization profiles could be saved,
> > I think that would be unnecessary and the UI too complex. Just provide
> > a list and let the user re-order the priorities.
> You can see profiles as several
> lists that you can choose from
In that case, a per application micro-management as proposed in this
discusion is too cumbersome.
A viable implementation for this "priorities" concept would be to provide a
list of priorized categories (pre-populated with categories for the most
common usage cases), allowing the association of ea
2008/12/3 Pedro Maurício Costa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Well... That brings another issue: prioritization. This means, for
> instance, that if you are listening to music and some other
> application needs your attention immediately should be able not only
> to be louder, but also make other apps quie
2008/11/12 Matthew Paul Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Take a simple example of "things that need doing". I have a "To do" folder
> containing various files and Web shortcuts for things I need to deal with. I
> have a "To do" e-mail folder containing messages describing tasks I need to
> work on (an
2008/11/12 Kirk Bridger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> Of course there's no point in doing it if the developers aren't interested
> in using the personas to help guide the direction of development, but I
> wanted to hear some thoughts from this mailing list first.
I'd say that we should create some perso
There's a really interesting project at OpenUsability for the usability of
Print Dialogs in open source desktops:
http://season.openusability.org/index.php/success-stories/openprinting
Their proposed solution is really refreshing, an miles away better than the
current standard in closed source de
They say an image is worth a thousand words: why can't Totem's volume
control be like this?
http://media-player-classic.brothersoft.com/screenshots/Media-Player-Classic-6.4.-9.0_2.png
(Link to screenshot of Media Player Classic).
For me, that is the perfect volume control widget. It doesn't need
2008/8/8 Iain * <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 1:42 PM, Diego Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > I'd like to add that volume is not available by 1 click (at least in the
> > Ubuntu default configuration). As the volume slider is hidden under a
2008/8/7 Dorian Bannier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Hi everyone. I'm french and my english is weak. So forgive me if I'm
> hard to read :)
> I post a first mail to make suggestion to ameliorate the ergonomics of
> totem.
>
> So, I made a list of the function of totem, and I was surprised that
> only 4 f
Why not creating a paper prototype and testing it on real people?
Take some screenshots of Totem with a loaded movie, the menus, and the
file chooser opened at the relevant folder with the subtitle files. An
print them all.
Then hand the first one to four of five friends, and ask them how they
wo
First things first, you should start by reading previous research on
the subject, to stand on the shoulders of giants and avoid reinventing
the wheel (so to speak). You can gain on the insight of the
researchers.
http://pamela.shirahime.ch/publications/GfA2004.pdf
If you have access to academic s
Nothing at these byzantine considerations change the fact that Lennart
identified a usability bug, namely that the keyboard binging for
opening the menu is not discoverable, which effectively prevented him
from using the environment without a mouse. ;-)
This is unrelated to it being a different l
On 06/03/06, Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Dear usability list,
>
> I'd appreciate if some of you could comment on the permissions user
> interface proposed under [1].
>
> Thanks in advance!
>
> [1] http://blogs.gnome.org/view/cneumair/2006/03/06/0
>
Good work, is nice having peop
How about a pen writing on a paper sheet? A pen writing on a hardisk
makes no sense.
The problem I see with arrow-in-a-hard-disk is that non-geek people
have no idea at all how a harddisk looks (or even what it is - they
usually call it the 'memory').
On 14/02/06, Leen Toelen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On 08/02/06, Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> It has been an interesting discussion, off to see if I can get my hands on
> a copy of the "Humane Interface" and finally read what Raskin has to say,
> may he rest in peace.
>
You could also go and try Archy if you haven't done it yet. It's an
On 08/02/06, David Christian Berg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 17:43 +0300, Alexey Rusakov wrote:
>
> > This is close to what Jef Raskin proposes in his "Humane Interface"
> > book. The idea is that instead of Open/Save there should be exactly one
> > button (he names it "Disk
On 06/02/06, Daniel F Moisset <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If you are doing a full redesign at tango, you could use:
>
> * open: folder with arrow going out (perhaps a small document at the
> end of the arrow, but i dont know if the detail will be eonugh)
> * close: folder with arrow going in (ag
On 23/11/05, BJörn Lindqvist <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm a pesky emacs user and guess how many times I've been frustrated
> that apps think Ctrl+S should be save instead of search? :) My point
> is that options are bad because they have weird side-effects. What if
> you tell the average user t
On 21/10/05, Eric Larson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> As for the beagle side of things, my hope is that whatever tool is used,
> we are able to find relationships between different elements on the
> desktop. I feel beagle can do this fwiw. Apple already does this to some
> extent with spotlight i
On 21/10/05, Manu Cornet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Aren't these kinds of interfaces (links, table of contents, etc.) a
> little too tricky for quite a simple dialog, after all ?
I was thinking along the lines of using a similar panel for selecting
applications as quick-launchers, and the sugges
On 21/10/05, Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Submenus are a usability nightmare - they're hard to navigate both for
> > they're difficult to open with the mouse and because they hide their
> > contents from sight. I prefer a plain list of big icons anyday.
>
> I expect part of it is tha
On 21/10/05, Tuomas Kuosmanen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-10-20 at 22:33 +0200, Diego Moya wrote:
> > It doesn't work for the task of adding *several* new applets. It
> At least on the "old" dialog you can drag the stuff to your panel - it
> has t
On 20/10/05, Manu Cornet <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Hi !
>
> I have been working on a new version of the "add to panel" dialog, for
> the Ubuntu distro. This dialog is already available by default in the
> new Ubuntu "Breezy Badger" version.
>
Good work! I liked the previous version, and now t
On 05/08/05, Matthew Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 5 Aug, 2005, at 7:52 AM, Diego Moya wrote:
> > ...
> > Why should a conflicting copy operation destroy the old content? It
> > would be much better to move overwriten files to trash instead of
> > delet
On 04/08/05, Davide Pesenti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 04/08/2005 15:16:43, Diego Moya wrote:
> > Also, is it clear the meaning of "overwritten" to a computer
> > illiterate user? I would add to the explanation text: "overwritten
> > files will be los
Also, is it clear the meaning of "overwritten" to a computer
illiterate user? I would add to the explanation text: "overwritten
files will be lost" (or better yet, "overwritten files will be moved
to trash") to make it clear that this dialog can produce data loss.
__
On 04/08/05, Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > You should reverse this order. If the text says "bigger and newer" and
> > you overwrite, you should end with a file bigger and newer.
>
> Exactly. That's what my proposal does. The toggle button is checked by
> default if active by def
On 04/08/05, Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think the rename knobs add too much clutter. We could make the labels
> clickable though and after renaming a file in-place, it would be removed
> from the dialog and saved under the new name. To be honest, I just don't
> see many use-ca
I've added my suggestions to your mockup:
http://img100.imageshack.us/my.php?image=conflictingfilerevisionsb1jf.png
On 04/08/05, Diego Moya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 04/08/05, Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > I've planned to place a l
On 04/08/05, Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I've planned to place a little checkbox in the first column header which
> > allows to unselect all if all are selected and allows to select all if
> > that's not the case.
Mh... It doesn't look clickable, lacks "affordance". It loo
Well done, it's a clean and simple dialog with all the required functions.
On 04/08/05, Corey Burger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 2. Better words for Candidate and Original (which is original?)
This other proposal had "New file" and "Existing file":
http://www.geocities.com/philbull_tk/gnome_d
The main interest in this technique is that's an application of an
abstract principle that could be applied elsewhere: the "crossing the
t's" manipulation technique. It's a new interface idiom to add to the
GUI repertory.
The author's of the fold'n'drop explain the general principles of this
techn
On 13/07/05, Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 13 Jul 2005, Steven Garrity wrote:
> > I'm not sure I have an alternative suggestion for where to put the
> > version and license/credit info,
>
> Command line arguements I suppose, and in the documentation.
> This is something applica
On 15/07/05, Eric Larson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-07-15 at 13:31 +0200, Diego Moya wrote:
> > Those seem to be the relevant actions of current educated computer
> > users: launch dedicated working environments (i.e. main applications),
> > launch trans
On 14/07/05, Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Diego Moya wrote:
>
> > "In pursuit of desktop evolution: User problems and practices with
> > modern desktop systems." (Ravasio 2004)
> >
> > Link: (might requi
On 14/07/05, Alan Horkan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 14 Jul 2005, Diego Moya wrote:
> > The Mezzo desktop is a GUI proposal to achieve these objectives:
> >
> > http://homepage.mac.com/jasonspisak/Mezzo/Menu3.html
>
> I still think this idea is
On 12/07/05, Eric Larson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hmmm
>
> > Having said that, I totally agree that we should strongly discourage
> > applications to install launchers on the desktop... if we could find a
> > way to prevent that whilst still allowing the user to create their own,
> > I'd be en
On 14/06/05, Murray Cumming <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've noticed that Fedora and Ubuntu use the horizontal "Window List"
> applet instead of the vertical mac-style "Window Selector" applet. I've
> always found this useless, and I guessed that maybe those distros used
> it because it's similar
What about extracting the "process all" to a checkbox option, thus
avoiding the Skip All/Replace All redundancy? You'd have this
interface:
The following existing files will be replaced with the new ones:
[X] Ask what to do for each file
[Cancel] [Skip] [Replace]
or with a radio button:
Th
On 25/05/05, Bosshard Raphael (bosshrap) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Topaz thoughts..
>
> Again a silly questions to the gods of usefull interfaces;
>
> Is the desktop useful (or is it just a relic from ancient times?)
It might have served well when documents where only text and image and
use
On 12/05/05, Daniel Borgmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 5/12/05, Diego Moya (a.k.a. TuringTest) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > In my perfect interface, commands would be invoked through pie menus
> > or gestures, both accessible with the right button.
> A
On 13/05/05, Daniel Borgmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 5/12/05, Steve Hall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Imagine you'd have access to a robotic filing clerk, who can serve you
> every document you are looking for in a second (after receiving the
> order). Would you throw away your desktop beca
On 12/05/05, Matt Kirchhoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Quoth Reinout van Schouwen on 5/7/2005 4:10 AM:
> > bothered with. We're not there yet, but ideally, retrieving users'
> > information should be taken care of completely by the computer.
> >
>
> Are you hinting at projects like Beagle & Laun
On 12/05/05, Daniel Borgmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 5/12/05, Diego Moya (a.k.a. TuringTest) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > With a semantics of "left button for selection", double-click could be
> > used like a Shift-click or Ctrl-click. List widg
On 12/05/05, Christian Neumair <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Turing,
>
> Am Donnerstag, den 12.05.2005, 15:48 +0200 schrieb Turing Test:
> > In this mode, control-click on a selected item doesn't unselect it. So
> > it's impossible to unselect all files, and very difficult to start a
> > fresh n
> On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 17:37 +0200, Daniele Levorato wrote:
> > 6 - Instant save deserves several drawbacks... the discussion would be
> > too long but basically in my opinion it's really better to leave to the
> > user the decision about when saving changes or discard them totally:
> > full histo
On 20/04/05, Sean Middleditch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Instant save also is not safe for most file formats. Unless the file
> format itself has built-in undo support, an automatic save feature would
> ensure that you could never undo any changes you make if your
> application crashes or the co
On 20/04/05, Matthew Thomas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Samuel Abels wrote:
> >...
> > Currently, most of the GNOME applications feel like, well, applications.
> > I thought about why, for example, a word processor does not feel like
> > what I believe it in essence should: A sheet of paper.
> > H
On Apr 2, 2005 2:43 PM, Age Bosma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You've got a point though some programs do tend to use multiple progress
> bars. Should this be something to address in the HIG with e.g. one or
> two examples to prevent people from using multiple progress bars?
> Would it be possible
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