Re: [Usability] My second file chooser proposal

[Magnus Bergman <magnusbe algonet se>]

On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 20:23:18 +0100 (BST)
Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:

> On Mon, 15 Sep 2003, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> 
> > Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2003 15:09:25 -0400
> > From: Sean Middleditch <elanthis awesomeplay com>
> > To: Usability List <usability gnome org>
> > Subject: Re: [Usability] My second file chooser proposal
> >
> > On Mon, 2003-09-15 at 15:15, Magnus Bergman wrote:
> >
> > > 3 Works from top to bottom and from left to right.
> > >
> > >   A human scans through information in this order, therefore the
> > >   widgets should be placed in this order. (See my previous mail
> > >   for more details.)
> >
> > Minor nitpick - I don't think all humans scan in this order; just
> > those
> 
> As far as I knew scan order is entirely cultural and based on reading.
>
> Europeans and North Americans and more, read from left to right, top
> to bottom.

Are you sure it's entirely based on reading? I've came across theories
about the fact that most people are right handed has something to do
with it. This might affect we consider right to be forward and left
being backwards. Another thing that might have had an impact on the
western culture is Christianity which had a concept of right being good
and left being evil. That was taken quite seriously some hundred years
ago and might have had an impact cultures with a right to left locale as
well. Many years of western influences (like video players and comic
books) and globalisation in general has for sure influenced other
cultures too. And perhaps those things has affected their scan order
too. (If anybody know about some scientific research at least related to
this, don't hesitate to tell me.) What I really want to say is that it's
PERHAPS not safe to assume that it is appropriate to "mirror" the gui if
the direction of the text is right to left.

> I was quite surprised to see that the Asian version of Microsoft
> Windows I saw had everthing left to right, but directional text
> support is difficult and Western influence is strong.

You don't have some pointers to this? It would be very interesting to
look at. It would help to know what their Windows verison look like if I
find some Asian people to discuss this subject with.

> > I'm not personally aware of any languages that flow bottom to top,
> > but there are plenty that go right to left.  If a dialog only works
> > well in left-to-right scenarios, it could be less than ideal.
> 
> Japanese goes in columns from top to bottom, right to left.

Both text in columns and rows exist. I think rows are slowly taking
over. I have read in several places that humans are faster at scanning
rows than columns (and AFAIK that doesn't differ between cultures). This
is mentioned in most interface design guidelines, i think.

It might be interesting to Microsoft interface design guidelines also
says that menus should only contain a few items (since they are
relatively difficult to scan). Further it recommends that two level
menus should be avoided and that more than two levels must never be
used. After coming up to this (which they probably spent a lot of
resources on) they design the start button as a central part of their
GUI!

> I would not be surprised if Asian designers wanted to come up with
> designs that better suited their culture.  At this stage there must be
> quite a few cultural oddities in Gnome we dont even realise.

Yes, I know there are. What different colors, in the stock icons,
represents for example (in Japan they have blue traffic lights). At same
point I think the stock icons most be "translated" to be more adequate
in different cultures. There are probably also cases there some symbols
makes as much sense to us that it does to them, but they have symbols
that are even better for them (but makes little sense to us). The kanji
character set (used in China and Japan) is basically a set of symbols
and might be very good to base icons on. Maybe I will try to contact
some of the gnome projects Japanese translators about opinions about
this matter.