New answers tagged user-behavior
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When wondering if something is globally understood, my first instinct is to look to interfaces that people are used to, globally, e.g. Windows. There, they do use arrows, but intriguingly enough they aren't placed next to items (where they draw too much attention to themselves and you might not know which row they represent) but above them. See the "Startup ...
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Two answers:
1 Arrow heads (triangles) mean sorting when they are set inside column headers. When set at the left of a list mean display or hide sub-items. In multimedia controls then mean "play" or "fast forward". It's a common idiom.
2 Different users might have different preferences for the arrows looks.
Like for example corporate colors, or general ...
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three lines with increasing or decreasing length -> can you show me an example? I don't remember seeing that pattern. – John Assymptoth
This is it:
But it is interesting how this pattern is perceived in right-to-left reading countries?
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I'm trying to figure out, if my developer tool, should assume everyone will want an arrow, or if this should be configurable.
If you're allowing for taste, you should keep it configurable. Arrows are used very often, but sometimes you see three lines with increasing or decreasing length to symbolize sort order.
Since you're building a web-app, leave ...
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Arrows are not intuitive but discoverable (a down arrow may be confusing - see comments to Igor-G's answer). If sorting takes only a wink, the user can find out the order suiting her best in only two clicks.
You can also try (for alphabetic languages, at least) the intuitive A->Z vs. Z->A,
and, mostly universally, 0->9 vs. 9->0.
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UI patterns suggests that the arrows are established conventions:
Each column headline/label is a link. When the label is clicked, the rows in the table are ordered ascending by the specific column’s values. If the same label is clicked again, the order is reversed: the rows in the table are now ordered descending by the specific column’s values.
...
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I've worked extensively with clothing and home furnishings brands, where lifestyle photography is often used. Often the choice of lifestyle photography is part of a larger brand expression. Some brands see themselves as lifestyle brands and others don't. It's a choice that impacts overall art direction and not just product display.
That being said, a brand ...
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Well, definitely not at startup unless the updates are really quick to perform. The computers at our school update at startup and it's a nightmare. Sometimes a PC takes half an hour to boot for this reason (Even if you just wanted to do a quick web search...).
Also, letting your users manually choose wether to update or not in a dialog is not a really good ...
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One technique that has been used on the PS3 and some Smart Phones is to schedule a time when the computer will most likely not be in use. For example the user could set the time of 2:00 AM to update when updates are available. At 2:00 AM if the computer is for some reason in use it would prompt the user if they want to update right now or delay until the ...
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The alternative is to do it in the background while their working,
however the used CPU percentage will be perceived as 'System Slowness'
and generate calls to the helpdesk.
At least OS X and Linux do perform many updates while the system is running. Don't know about Windows.
The reason systems wait for startup and shutdown isn't because of ...
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I agree with you that Google is intentionally discouraging the use of Delete over Archive. Whether there is a nefarious reason behind this is impossible to know unless you are a Google employee. However, there are enough evidence to show you that the intent is deliberate.
In the Inbox list view, if you swipe left OR right, they BOTH lead to "Archive" ...
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There is some research that has gone down in this field. One is the Rethinking the progress bar, where researchers found that halts in the process; where the user couldn't see that anything was happening, was detrimental for the perceived time of process. Even though two processes took the same amount of time, the one that displayed more feedback of what was ...
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I would challenge your assumption that google is trying to encourage a user to Archive instead of Delete. Can you prove any backing to this assumption?
I imagine it is more of an error prevention rather than error resolution.
Deleting an email, though not irreversible, is a long(ish) process. To save the user the trouble of going through that because they ...
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I agree with rk. that the placement of your CTA button is dependent on your design. If the scope of your project is quite large, in that the website you are creating will be relying on templates, you should place your CTA buttons in a consistent location across all of them. Of course, there are pages, such as landing pages that can be an exception.
I ...
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There is no one place which is best to dedicate for call to action. Depending on your design you will end up with a good place suited for that design. Some of the most common placements for call to action buttons are (Smashing mag article: Call to action buttons, examples and best practices):
Placement in a distinguished area
Placement at the top ...
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Two major issues no-one has mentioned yet:
Sensation: Condoms don't feel as good as unprotected sex. There is less stimulation. This can potentially be a good thing (you last longer) but is often considered a very bad thing, and in the worst case can result in the user being unable to climax.
The problem seems to be that the condom covers the most ...
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In your situation, a user will just copy the full model name from the printer properties dialog in Windows, to the search input field. So if it doesn't match, the user won't try to remove the model name and search again. Also, it might not be clear to him what exactly he should type into the search field.
I think it would be better to make a separate field ...
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Firstly, there is Google's solution, which is to become physical.
An option to recover the password is to be sent a code to a previously registered and verified cell phone. When you want to reset your password you get a text message in your cellphone. You are taken to a page that, upon entering the right number, takes you to the password resetting form.
...
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Regarding #2, see what Google did in their homepage. Don't be afraid to design your page according to your prioritization.
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I would suggest a few things:
First, if search is a major part of the workflow, then do not stick it in the corner. Make it at the top of the screen, very prominent. Either in the middle, or if it's stuck in a corner, then make it stick out by letting it overflow the header area or whatever.
Second, put some text in the box before a search is performed, ...
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This is a question of task performance. How do people write emails? The interface should support task performance.
Top-down: subject first influences body
Bottom-up: body first influences subject
Both processes are at work and when to use what approach is driven by context. So support both approaches without breaking the flow of either by giving ...
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I've just had another thought, and that is to do with how you use the keyboard.
I habitually Tab between fields in a form. However, once in the body, the Tab key ought to become captured, so you can enter a tab character as an indent.
If the Subject comes after the Body in the Tab order, I can't actually get to it without switching to a mouse or using some ...
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This may be similar to the question Why don't ATMs give you cash before your card?:
Users follow the tasks in sequence, but regard the task as completed once they have achieved their goal. Subsidiary steps are easy to abandon at this point.
The goal of writing an email is conveying information. Once the message body is complete that goal is supposedly ...
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Whenever you are communicating via printed media, it is an unwritten norm of sorts to include a title/header. The function of the header is to summarize the following content (in a single line). You see it in the newspapers, magazines, posters, presentations, etc.
Imagine magazine and news articles without titles. How do you even decide what you want to ...
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I'd like to approach this question from a bit of a different perspective than that of other answers.
What's In An Order
The essential question posed is questioning the philosophy and methodology of ordering form fields.
On the one hand, one might wish to order them in the order that the author would be expected to write them. This is a perfectly sensible ...
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It's simple information hierarchy. Just as a paper has the author and title at the top, so does email.
Now, one could argue that that is only important for the reader, not the author. And I think that's a valid argument. That said, when we read emails, they have a particular hierarchy and an equally valid argument is that the template used to create the ...
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I suspect that people write e-mail applications this way because other people have written e-mail applications that way and everyone is used to it. Users expect that when they are confronted by a completely unfamiliar e-mail application, it will prompt them for a subject at the top of the entry form, and a body below. Users get what they expect and don't ...
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Good question, and I think that the reason is:
1 - e-mail was first specified in the RFC 733: in that specification there were a header and the body of the message.
The header are the information used to send the email:
(...) That is, a message consists of some information, in a rigid format, followed by the main part of the message, which is text ...
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As a reader, I want to know "Why are you sending me this email?" so I know whether it is worth my while reading it now, instead of doing all those other important things on my to-do list.
As a reader, I expect the writer to know why they are sending me the email, and more to the point, I hope they will know why they are sending me the email before they ...
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For readers: You need to know what the stuff is all about.
For writer: You need to know what the stuff you are going to write about.
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Emails were never intended as a form of chat type messaging. Remember that they are electronic versions of mail, so trying to modify them to be something they weren't designed for is a mistake.
As to the reasons why we write the subject line first:
The subject line is part of the header of an email (see the original RFC822 and the newer RFC5322), and ...
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There are two perspectives here. You are talking about your (writers's) perspective and it appears that thinking about an appropriate title is slightly demanding but when you look at reader's perspective, it makes perfect sense for him to read the Heading (Title of the email) first before the Continent.
In your context, you seem to use EMAIL AS A MESSAGE ...
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I can only think of two particular justifications for this:
Back when this was not a standard convention, there was probably not a lot of difference between the length of the subject line and the body text (think back to the of the early days of text messaging, and even twitter). Given the ability and convenience to add a lot of things to emails now, one ...
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