Re: notes on combo boxes

[Guy Harris <gharris flashcom net>]

On Fri, Aug 04, 2000 at 01:02:05PM -0400, Caleb Land wrote:
> Someone submitted a GTK patch which made the menus scrollable ala MacOS,

I assume that's MacOS's way of solving the Really Long List problem?

> it is a
> solution to the problem, but I personally still prefer the non-editable
> combo box.

Just out of curiosity, why?  I also tend to prefer it, but I don't know
whether that's the result of

	1) familiarity;

	2) not popping up a Big Menu for a Big List (even if the Big
	   Menu is scrollable; if MacOS limits the size of the menu to
	   something reasonable, that sounds somewhat like, err, umm, a
	   non-editable combo box, the one issue with which that I can
	   see is that it might be popped up in a size that requires
	   scrolling even if a larger size would still work well and
	   show the entire list).

> 	As far as them not being intuitive, this may be true, and maybe a
> downward arrow would be a better image than the dash.  Though this isn't
> really to big an issue, because I think that people make things intuitive
> for themselves (a UNIX user would tell you that a -f command switch it
> intuitive :)) and since GTK+ is a fairly widely used toolkit, it will
> become intuitive as more people use it.

They probably do, but if something can be done to make it take less time
for them to do so, that'd perhaps be an improvement nonetheless.

There's an interesting paper at

	http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html

"Intuitive Equals Familiar", by Jeff Raskin, in the September 1994 CACM,
in which he says:

	From this and other observations, and a reluctance to accept
	paranormal claims without repeatable demonstrations thereof, it
	is clear that a user interface feature is "intuitive" insofar as
	it resembles or is identical to something the user has already
	learned.  In short, "intuitive" in this context is an almost
	exact synonym of "familiar."

The example he gave was:

	But [the Star Trek movie scene with Scotty saying "Computer..."
	to the Mac's mouse as if it were a microphone and the computer
	took voice input] is just the whimsy of a screenwriter.  Or is
	it? I performed a deliberate experiment some years ago using one
	of the early Apple Macintosh computers.  I loaded a children's
	program, The Manhole, where user interaction is strictly (and
	cleverly) limited to "clicking" on various places on an image. 
	Clicking consists of moving the cursor to some location on the
	screen by moving the mouse on a surface and momentarily pressing
	the only button on the mouse.  Clicking on certain places yields
	a new screen.  This cold description does not express the
	delight most people find in running The Manhole program, but
	that is not relevant here.

	My subject was an intelligent, computer-literate,
	university-trained teacher visiting from Finland who had not
	seen a mouse or any advertising or literature about it.  With
	the program running, I pointed to the mouse, said it was "a
	mouse", and that one used it to operate the program.  Her first
	act was to lift the mouse and move it about in the air.  She
	discovered the ball on the bottom, held the mouse upside down,
	and proceeded to turn the ball.  However, in this position the
	ball is not riding on the position pick-offs and it does
	nothing.  After shaking it, and making a number of other
	attempts at finding a way to use it, she gave up and asked me
	how it worked.  She had never seen anything where you moved the
	whole object rather than some part of it (like the joysticks she
	had previously used with computers): it was not intuitive.  She
	also did not intuit that the large raised area on top was a
	button.

	But once I pointed out that the cursor moved when the mouse was
	moved on the desk's surface and that the raised area on top was
	a pressable button, she could immediately use the mouse without
	another word.  The directional mapping of the mouse was
	"intuitive" because in this regard it operated just like
	joysticks (to say nothing of pencils) with which she was
	familiar.

and he later says:

	I suggest that we replace the word "intuitive" with the word
	"familiar" (or sometimes "old hat") in informal HCI discourse. 
	HCI professionals might prefer another phrase:

	Intuitive = uses readily transferred, existing skills.

	It would read very differently-and more honestly-if the
	magazines discussed above made it clear that ratings were based,
	for example, 50% on user satisfaction, 30% on productivity, and
	20% on familiarity.  Note that user satisfaction and early
	productivity (long-term productivity, though of great importance
	to users, is not tested) are strongly dependent on familiarity,
	so that the rating system is further flawed in not being built
	on a set of independent (orthogonal) bases: the three parameters
	tend to rise and fall together.

	That quality of a new interface paradigm that is commonly titled
	"intuitive" may well turn out to be one of the worst qualities it
	can have.