Re: [Usability] [RFC] Proposed AbiWord preferences dialog mockup

[John Levon <levon movementarian org>]

On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 06:56:15PM -0700, Dom Lachowicz wrote:

> Maybe. Maybe not. It's not clear to me that it should
> be effortless. If you view saving of documents as
> filing them into cabinets/folders, then it's not
> necessarily clear that this should always be
> effortless. Filing is a deliberate and natural act
> that most likely requires some intervention.

A filing cabinet is used for organisation of documents.

It certainly makes sense for the user to able to re-organise where
documents are stored. This is what the file manager is for. But it is a
separate thing from "don't destroy my document please".

> > And guess what - if I leave that scratch paper on my
> > desk, it stays where it is when I leave the desk.
> 
> That's like leaving abiword up and running on your
> desktop. You come back the next morning, the app is
> still there, your data still intact, you sit down at

The notion of the app itself is confusing. Your typical user cares about
documents not about apps. How many times have you heard users say they
edit their documents in "Windows" ? It's extremely common.

> This could also be a breakdown in the metaphor's we're
> using. There isn't always a 1:1 mapping between
> computer models and real world ones, nor should there
> necessarily be.

Certainly.

> Closing the window is similar to putting down a pen.

Then by your analogy, when I put down a pen, I am forced to think about
whether I want the document or not ? That makes no sense. Getting rid of
the document is an unrelated decision to the decision of stopping work
on a document (except obviously, I don't want to work on a document I
want to get rid of).

> when you want to write again. Not saving a document,
> even after being prompted to save your work, is like
> saying "no, I really don't want my document,"

Yes it is. However, alerts *suck*. Users don't read alerts (across all
skill categories). Novice users are frightened by alerts. Alerts are
intrusive. Alerts are stupid ("What ? I just want to do something else
for god's sake !"). Every single alert, especially confirmation alerts,
should have an extremely good rationale for its existence. There is no
good reason I can think of to force the user to make this decision at
this particular point in time. It's a clear example of implementation
detail showing through to the UI IMHO.

> There are good reasons to crumple it up sometimes.

There certainly are. Why are you making me make this decision when I
close a window ?

> So I suppose the question is which of these is
> preferable:
> 
> 1) "Are you sure that you don't want to save your
> work? You'll lose all of your hard work!"
> 2) "Do you want to shred this work I've auto-saved for
> you? Do you want to file it in any particular place
> with any particular name?"

Number two, any day. And it's the job of a desktop's file manager,
something specifically designed to handle both of these tasks.

Dragging a document to a bin icon to get rid of it works. It's easy and
intuitive, mainly deriving from the fact it's a direct manipulation
metaphor.

Some irritating, patronising, usually app-modal dialog without enough
information, asking at the wrong time is nowhere near as usable. If you
don't agree with that, then fine, there's not much point in this
argument.

"Do you want to save the document report2003.doc ?"

"Um, I'm not sure. What's in it ?"

> Maybe I'm being silly - applications do crash, cats do
> chew through power plugs. But then again, sometimes
> ink gets spilled all over your desk and the dog really
> does eat your homework. I've always viewed this as an
> argument for auto-save every N minutes, though, and
> not implicit save.

Of course. They are mostly unrelated problems.

regards
john