Re: Gnome Usability Test

[Heeten <azari geo yahoo com>]

> 3.  The report comments on the dangerousness of
> `Halt', and recommends
>     increasing the spacing between the radio button
> for `Halt' and the
>     radio buttons for `Logout' and `Reboot'.
> 
>     However, it's generally a bad idea to use radio
> buttons for commands
>     in the first place. (The existence of the
> mistake in the Shut Down
>     dialogs in Microsoft Windows 95 and 98 isn't, I
> would hope,
>     justification enough for repeating it in GNOME.
> Windows 2000 is even
>     worse, using a popup menu so you can't see all
> your options at
>     once.) Conceptually, radio buttons are for
> choosing *how* something
>     happens, not for choosing *what* happens.
> 
>     And with a very basic GOMS model (assuming that
> each command in the
>     dialog is equally likely, and that it is equally
> easy to find and
>     click any control), it's pretty easy to work out
> that the current UI
>     will take 75 percent longer to use than one
> which just used buttons
>     (1.75 clicks as opposed to 1 click).
> 
>    
>
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
>    
>
|:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::|
>    
>
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
>     |  .                                            
>              |
>     | /!\  Are you sure you want to log out?        
>              |
>     | """                                           
>              |
>     |      [ ] _Save my current session             
>              |
>     |                                               
>              |
>     |                                               
>              |
>     |      ( _Halt  ) (_Reboot )          ( Cancel )
> (( Logout )) |
>    
>
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
> 
>     Or, if we substitute more human-readable
> terminology:
> 
>     |                                               
>              |
>     |      (_Shut Down ) (_Restart )     ( Cancel )
> (( Log Out )) |
>    
>
+-------------------------------------------------------------+
> 
>     As always, though, it's better if you can design
> a UI which doesn't
>     require an alert at all. In this case, that
> would mean finding space
>     to provide separate menu items for each of the
> commands, and making
>     them sufficiently difficult to get to that
> you're sure that the user
>     really means it without having to ask for
> confirmation.

Personally I liked it when you just had a box come up
with a button that said something like yes, log out
and one that said cancel.  (I think this used to be a
Ximian default)  I don't really think non-root users
need to be able to shutdown a machine from the logout
button, and since on a some systems picking the
shutdown or reboot option as non-root doesn't work, it
may be even more confusing to users, who could
possibly just sit around expecting the computer to
shut down.  I think simpler is better in this case,
and just a shutdown button and cancel button should
suffice.

Heeten

> -- 
> Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla UI Design component
> default assignee thing
> <http://mozilla.org/> -- And yes, I'm posting from
> Mac OS. Sorry.

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