RE: Panel UI - startmenu productivity thoughts



At 8:00 PM +0200 9/1/01, Aeneas wrote:
I see -- the habit of starting a certain app directly this way is not
desired - if the started application changes the user would make a
mistake and launch the wrong application.

Could this behavoir be avoided if it's clear and obvious for the user,
what application is quick launched by a click or even double-click on
the Foldername?
For exdample by putting an icon of the quicklaunched app next to the
Foldername -- this wouldn't be the clean and easy way.. and I dont like
it either :) just an idea.

I think the problem that Jorg is talking about is that no matter how clear you make the visual feedback, if I have a habit of moving my mouse to a particular location and clicking a particular button and expecting it to launch a particular app, I will very likely not notice that the visual feedback has changed and will be annoyed when another app launches.

Raskin calls this "modality" because it means that a particular user action has a different effect based on a system state which is outside the user's current locus of attention; i.e. the last app they launched out of this folder, which could've been minutes, hours, days ago. He does argue in "Humane Interface" that modality like this should be avoided, and that any particular user action should _always_ have the same effect no matter what the system state.

 > Another point is that it's difficult to decide what the last opened
 application is. If I have opened my mail software from the internet
 menu, than opened an HTML document from my file manager, then what is my
 last started internet application? Is it my mail software, or my
 internet browser?

Regarding this point, it would be reasonable to include just the
applications launched from the startmenu itself in the 'counting' or
'statistics'.

The difficulty, you and Liam pointed out, of habitual clicks to
quickstart an application is the only problem I see, cause:
 - Startmenu order and placement is not touched
 - It is fully optional to use it or to do as usual

Yep. It's definitely not all _that_ destructive a feature, and it doesn't get in the way of habituation for the obvious features, i.e. picking an app directly from the menu, so that's good. But because the feature itself is modal, it would be difficult to habituate.

[Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface"]
 > Features that make a user interface modal (i.e. it behaves different,
 depending on the current mode) are almost always a bad idea. If the user
 doesn't want to make any mistakes, a modal interface forces him to check
 for the correct setting of the mode. That might mean less mouse
 movement, but it also means more things to keep in mind for the user.

I didn't read Raskin's book - so, if I understood right, basically
having the say "Internet" folder change it's function (say one time
"Evolution" to another time "Mozilla") is not the way to go?
You could make it more consistent and understandable to the user, if
just the most recently launched application is highlighted.

The thing about habits is that once you create a habit, you _don't_ have to think about or notice things like this.

An example: the first time you drive a particular route to work/school, you tend to notice things like street signs to help you plan your route. When you do it every day, you cease to notice such things -- you have formed a habit. If one day the city renames a street along your route, you are VERY unlikely to notice the new name.

So it is clear for the user: "I started this application from the start
menu, so it is highlighted next time."

Well, the rule is at least consistent. On the other hand, if you're not really thinking about which app you pick, it's not necessarily something that you'd remember the next time you go to the menu.
Hmmm now, thinking about the lines you just wrote me - A way to support
habbit and include this feature is making the quicklauncher
customisizable:
 - The quicklauncher is placed by the user (e.g. via the rightclick
popup in the startmenu)
 - if a quicklauncher is placed, the mechanism is activated

Needs some more thoughts, what do you think?

Well, if you're going to go that far, why not just make it easy for the user to copy the launcher from the submenu into the main menu? (Actually, can't you do that already with a right-click-and-drag?)

Actually, now that I think about it, that would definitely be _my_ preferred solution. On MacOS, Windows, and GNOME, I've always put frequently-launched apps directly into the Start/Apple/Foot menu explicitly so that it's quicker for me to launch them. That has the advantage of being fairly clear and explicit, although it does require explicit actions on the user's part.

Adam
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