[Usability]Re: DrWright simplification

[Richard Hult <rhult codefactory se>]

mån 2003-03-10 klockan 21.21 skrev Lars Weber:
> [ Cc'ed to usability gnome org so other people can comment if they want. ]
> 
> Greetings!

Hi, thanks for your very useful comments :)

>   Work interval:  [      ] minutes
> 
>   Break interval: [      ] minutes
> 
> These two options, I think, are the only ones that almost any user should
> really ever have any interest to change and everything else should, if
> possible, just work in a sensible way without configuration.

I would love to remove the warning time preference, since I don't like
it either. I added it in the first place since I wasn't sure if I should
use the break time, or a hardwired period, like 3 minutes. I was worried
that if you set a very long or short work time or break time, a hard
coded warning time wouldn't "feel right".

After using it with different work intervals for quite some time now, I
think using 2 or 3 minutes of warning time always, would work quite
well. What do you think?

> The other two settings that I think are superfluous are those under
> `Advanced': `Warning method' and `Unblocking'.  Leaving the possible
> requirement for a password aside for the moment I think that both of these
> options exist basically for the same reason: to workaround a
> usability-problem that is inherent to the current approach DrWright takes.

I only added the warning dialog as a temporary workaround until some
other problems were fixed (tooltip/bubble support in the tray icon and
postponing a break), like you guessed.

It's just that the code that measures time and checks if the user is
idling needs to be rewritten to support that kind of thing and I haven't
gotten around to do it yet.

> What I suggest as a lower-level, non-option workaround is quite simple:
> always have a button (similar to the current unblock button) on the break
> screen that can be used to *postpone* (not end!) the break for something
> like, say, 3 minutes.

My plan is to make it start over from the warning phase probably.

> Now... whether the option to postpone a break should still be available
> for breaks that have already been postponed (perhaps with shrinking
> time-intervals before new breaks) or only for a fixed amount of times
> (i.e. only once or twice) is something that I'm not completely sure about
> (and that should perhaps best be experimented with anyway).  What I'm at
> least inclined towards though, is the former, because the latter still has
> the potential of really annoying users sometimes.  And given that the user
> has setup DrWright voluntarily, I think that the recurring break screen
> should be enough to make him take the break eventually.

Yeah, agreed.

> What remains now is how to integrate a password/phrase, for situations
> where the user wants to walk off during a break while knowing that his
> computer is secured against other peoples use (for as long as the break
> lasts, at least).  An alternative to have a password-related setting in
> the properties might here be to:

The purpose of the pass phrase is not security at all, it's a way to
make it a bit more cumbersome to stop the break (I found myself pressing
the button and forgetting about the break). Which is, again, somewhat of
a workaround for the break not being postponed, by instead canceled.

I'd rather not add a real password here. If you need to lock the screen,
you can always just postpone the break and lock the screen: I don't want
to add an almost full-fledged screen saver...

> Anyway, that's basically what I wanted to say... sorry for the long mail.
> The above is all just meant as a suggestion, of course, and I'll happily
> accept that there might be differing views :-)

Thanks, I appreciate the input!

Regards,
Richard