Re: [Usability]Eugenia's UI review/mockup

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

Visual design is certainely an aspect of usability (although not the
focus of usability). Its usually placed in the category of "subjective
satisfaction", which is just to say that a program is more usable if
users find it pleasant to use :-)

We also have a visual design chapter in the HIG, see:
   http://usability.gnome.org/hig/draft_hig/layout.html

Its a little weirded out right now since our images aren't getting
properly installed. So you'll see old/messed up images, etc.

Interestingly enough, Coleen (a visual designer / usability person from
Sun who was kind enough to chip in in an area Calum and I aren't as
experienced) proposes layout techniques very similar to Eugenia. We
probalyb need to make these more explicit, but the total effect from
using indentation, strong alignment, and bold fonts for group heading is
excellent. Its easy to scan, attractive, and well organized.

Also, much of Eugenia's commentary is premised in usability rather than
just graphic design, making it *definitely* on-topic :-)

On Wed, 2002-08-07 at 00:38, Daniel Borgmann wrote:
> 1.) The "help" and "close" buttons in the theme preferences aren't
> aligned with the group border (or tab border as in the RedHat version).
> All other preferences tools do align them. Should be very very easy to
> change. :)

This is a bug, plain and simple. We just never got around to checking
all the desktop preference pages, I guess. Amusingly enough, I had them
all fixed in my source tree when this topic came up. I just checked in
the changes.

> 2.) "Go to theme folder" was suggested to be "Open theme folder". What
> do you think? It seems to make sense as this button indeed opens a new
> view/folder and not directly goes to it. Also it's shorter (in
> wordcount).

Good suggestion. I think I was on crack when I suggested "Go to".

> 3.) She suggests different (in brightness) colors for elements like
> buttons or childviews (groups, etc). I don't know if this is technically
> possible in a theme but basically I like this suggestion (it has
> certainly usability advantages and also looks quite nice). 

Yes, this is something I noticed with the theme too. Its an excellent
theme in many respects, its too bad that controls fade into the
background and look disabled so much.

> 4.) Bold font for group headers? I really like this suggestion, what do
> you think? This would make groups probably much more noticable (and
> easier to group the elements in your mind as there is more visual
> separation). 

I love it, and its already in the HIG ;-)

-Seth