Re: Replacing control center menus

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On Wed, 2006-12-13 at 19:01 +0100, Manu Cornet wrote:

> We've done the same kind of thing (search-as-you-type filtering) with
> the "Add to panel" dialog in Ubuntu. The point is not to let the user
> remember where the setting he wants lies (does he really care?), but
> to let him find it quickly every time. Isn't it fine if he uses the
> search box each time?

It's "fine", but I'm fairly sure that once you learned where the icon
was going to appear, it would usually be quicker to double-click it
straight away, than to move your hands from the mouse to the keyboard,
start typing, and (possibly, depending on the number of matches) move
your hands back to the mouse again to activate it.  The brain is *very*
good at recognising patterns (the icon+text) and remembering positions.

If only we had endless time in our usability labs to test all my crazy
theories, though :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

-- 
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            Java Desktop System Group
http://ie.sun.com                      +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems