Re: [Usability] triple mouse click behavior

[Maurizio Colucci <seguso forever tin it>]

On Thursday 19 February 2004 02:49, Nadyne Mielke wrote:
> On Wednesday, February 18, 2004, at 03:48 PM, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
> > Funny how you assume the toolbar should contain the most used commands.
> > Essentially you are assuming that sorting funcionality by frequency of
> > access
> > is a good thing. But it isn't always. Sorting by frequency is good
> > when you
> > are an expert and you are concerned about speed. It is bad when you are
> > learning. Who is learning wants a layout as clean and uniform as
> > possible. Or,
> > alternatively, a layout which is structured by semantics, not by
> > frequency.
> > He is not concerned about speed/number-of-clicks at all.
>
> So you're saying that having oodles of icons on the toolbars, so that
> the layout is structured by [your idea of] semantics, is going to make
> life easier for a new user?

I didn't say that. I said that new users are not interested in sorting 
commands by frequency. Better sortings in "learning mode" would be: 

- grouping by semantics: e.g 
              
                       select: word, sentence, all

- grouping by appliability to the current context (e.g hiding every option 
that makes no sense in the current situation, and making the rest of the 
options sorted by alphabet or semantics)

> In general, new users prefer layouts with the most basic and
> frequently-accessed items on the toolbars.

It is bad to treat the least used action differently (for example by hiding 
them in submenus/dialogs) by default, because

* you create different paradigm to do similar things; paradigms which must be 
all remembered. Learnability decreases dramatically. Few people will migrate 
to your program because they must relearn how to do things, one by one;

* when the user needs to do something uncommon (e.g. play a music 8 hours from 
now, burn a CD from a cue sheet), he doesn't know where to look. Frustration.

* The user may not understand that he can do something uncommon. It is not 
apparent what you can do with the program.

* The user may not consider the action to be uncommon;

* therefore, the user may not understand why the action is so hidden.

> It's the more advanced user 
> who wants something so esoteric as 'select one sentence' on the toolbar.

The consequence of this kind of reasoning is that 80% MSWord users don't use 
styles, but keep formatting each paragraph explicitely.

Maurizio