Hi aliaksei
Hi Stef
I saw an early version of Spotter with arrows near each item and it was IMHO awful. But still, pencils taste differently for each of us ;)
I do not know. May be the arrow should not be on every element but just on the group/category may be the colors should be deemed.
I can agree with you that people "do not get how to use spotter". However it depends on how we define "use spotter". From my prospective almost all do understand how to use main feature: searching. I think the whole discussion is about more advanced features.
No it is about frustration. I get a list in front of my nose and I have no clue how to access it. I click on it and it does not work. I have to read blog to see something and I have no clue how to obtain the same result. This kind of thing.
Let's talk about how to open preview(pane to the right) in context of learnability which consists of multiple design principles. During our analysis we will try to determinate violated ones and see how they can be fixed.
a) Familiarity. It consists of guessability which is surely violated - I can not imagine anyone who could guess that in order to open preview she should click on arrow to the right of the item (I talk about intentional click, not random one to see what will happen).
ok
Second part describes how prior knowledge applies to new system. If we would take Pharo as new system, then principle is finally busted because I never saw such behaviour anywhere else - it was invented in spotter. If new system would be spotter in context of Pharo, then still violated as clicking on arrow is not used anywhere else in Pharo.
If you put a little triangular icons on top of the arrow then people will certainly undertsand that they can click on it. My point is ask yourself why many people do not know how to open the pane. I could not find it. Once I got it I asked around and really few people know it.
Possible way to fix familiarity principle is to spread usage of arrow to the whole Pharo (or world) or to modify its design to improve guessability by adding preview icon/label/whatever on the arrow.
b) Generalizability. Meaning that user can extend specific interaction knowledge to new situations. Clicking on arrow is only used in one place in spotter - so there is no chance for user to extend not existing knowledge. Violated.
Fix is similar to familiarity - clicking on arrow to expand/open new pane should be used in more places.
I do not think.
c) Predictability. Consists of determinism and operation visibility. Determinism is not violated because effect of clicking on arrow can be immediately observed by user. However, operation visibility is violated - arrow does not change depending whether preview is available or not.
To fix operation visibility we need to change arrow color/icon depending on availability of preview.
You do not reply to the point that to see that I can interact with a group of element I have to select the first one. Currently it only work because some people use arrows. I never because there are at the bottom of my keyboard.
d) Synthesisability. Not violated - user can easily observe effect of past operations. Preview has only two states: on and off.
e) Consistency. We can not say anything, because there are no similar situations in the system.
To conclude, an action to open preview should be improved. The most easiest fix would be to add something on top of arrow to make it obvious (improve guessability) what clicking does.
yes to improve the fact that we may click on something.
More preferred one IMHO is to expose arrow usecases and teach users so that generalizability would start playing a role.
I do not get it. You should understand that Pharo can be used with a mouse.
Sorry for long email Alex
Le 20/1/16 14:30, Aliaksei Syrel a écrit :
On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Ben Coman <btc@openinworld.com <mailto:btc@openinworld.com>> wrote:
+1. Its annoying that it takes two clicks to dive into categories like "Implementors" (one to click an item under the category to make the arrow appear, and then another to click on it) when it would only take one if that arrow for each category was always visible.
Doru is right, always visible arrows would pollute UI. I do not see why. A user interface is not something that we should click randomly at to learn how to use it.
A compromise solution would be to show them on mouse hover - one click + not overcrowded interface.
may be but you can ask yourselves why so many people do not get how to use Spotter. I asked again today to people how to show the pane on the right and nobody knew obviously.
Cheers, Alex