Re: [Usability] triple mouse click behavior

[Maurizio Colucci <seguso forever tin it>]

On Thursday 19 February 2004 12:11, Nadyne Mielke wrote:
> At 06:41 PM 2/19/2004, Maurizio Colucci wrote:
>
> Since you snipped (without noting) all of my requests for citations, I'm
> going to assume that you are lacking anything even remotely resembling
> evidence to support your claims.


see below

> [snip]
>
> > > so they can't find anything anyway.
> >
> >non sequitur.  They can, by scanning the list with their eyes, or by
> >narrowing
> >the list it by keyword (see below).
>
> It is utterly trivial for a user to not be able to find something in a
> lengthy list.  Haven't you ever missed something that was right in front of
> you? 

this is an inherent problem of humanity, which affects any solutions we might 
ever think. SO is irrelevant

> You can continue to insist that visual clutter is a good thing, but 
> you have nothing to back up your assertion.

see below.

> For visually-disabled users that use a screen reader, a lengthy list
> dramatically increases the amount of time that they have to spend doing any
> task.

you are assuming this list must be scanned linearly with their eyes, which is 
not necessary

>
> > > frustration.
> >
> >no frustration. They are learning so they are not concerned about speed of
> >execution.
>
> Err, to quote from something you write later in your post:
> You can't be serious here.
>
> Do you really believe that a new user isn't interested in completing their
> task in [what they view as] a reasonable period of time?  They're willing
> to deal with a 'learning curve', but any learning curve that is too steep
> will lose the vast majority of users.
>
> >In the learning phase you have to understand what the program can do and
> >quickly find HOW TO DO it. Not DO it quickly; quickly find out how to do
> > it. There is a big difference. In that phase, scanning a long list is not
> > a problem, because you are not concerned about speed of execution. The
> > important thing, in that phase, is that it must be obvious WHERE TO LOOK
> > for the option. i.e. in which list you will find what you need.
>
> This is nothing more than your opinion, and you have not yet provided
> relevant research (such as a usability study that you have conducted
> yourself) to back up your statement.


I did a usability research. In fact you already know it :-)

  http://segusoland.sourceforge.net

It works very well, although the index is still incomplete.

> [snip]
>
> >What can must be done to fix it? We can use the fact that the idea is
> > already in his mind, translated for free into english. We put a flat list
> > with all the things that can be done, unstructured, and make it
> > searchable by keyword. This way you solve all the learnability problems:
> > 1) the user immediately knows where to look for anything (in that list)
> > 2) the user immediately knows whether and how a given thing can be done.
>
> This assumes that the user knows the word that you are using for the task
> that they want to perform. 

Of course! :-)) This is an obvious precondition that is always met.

If you don't know what you want to do, why are you using a compter  at 
all? :-)

> You've brought up the example of burning CDs 
> earlier, which is an excellent example.  There are lots of words that the
> user may have 'translated for free into English' [or their native language,
> of course].  They may want to 'burn a CD', or 'create a CD', or 'copy data
> from the hard drive onto a CD', or 'make a CD'.  


Yes!

> Your list methodology 
> means that either (a) the user has to learn your term for completing their
> task, 

This would of course be a failure. It ouwld force the user to scan the whole 
list, defeating the purpose.

> or (b) you have to have every single way that the user might refer to 
> the task in the list.  (b) is, quite clearly, an unobtainable goal: 

?? your reasoning is disconcerting to me.

If YOU Nadine are able to understand all these terms, why should a machine not 
be able to? :-)
Furthermore, in english there are a finite number of words, neaologisms aside, 
so we don't even need real language understanding

> there's 
> always going to be someone out there who comes up with a different way to
> describe the task in English.

If we don't count neologisms, this is false.
Futhermore, it is not necessary to have a 100% success in word matching. I'd 
say 90% is enough to have the user not loose confidence in the system.

> >To render the searching time irrelevant, the just enters some keywords
> > (which he already knows) and the list narrows to show only the actions
> > that are related to the keywords (syntactically and semantically of
> > course).
>
> Searching time is never irrelevant.  If the user enters the wrong keyword,
> or makes a typographical error, then the user has to spend more time on
> their task.

You are talking of syntax errors here. It is equivalent to clicking the wrong 
button. This is once again a problem of humanity. Ah, now you are climbing 
mirrors... :-)

> >Now, the fact that this is not in your schoolbooks does not imply you
> >shouldn't be able to grasp it at the third attempt.
>
> Ahhhhhh.  This appears to be the crux of the issue: you don't trust
> 'schoolbooks'.
>
> I am simply asking for proof of your statements.  It doesn't have to be in
> a traditional textbook; in fact, I would question its relevance if it is in
> a textbook, since books very quickly become out-of-date.  A simple
> usability test would be sufficient.  Until such a time that you have
> actually conducted a usability test to test your assertions, then such
> assertions are nothing more than conjecture.

I hope I've given you enough.

> >Your solution (SHIFT+
> >ARROWS) has obvious learnability problems I won't even state.
>
> I can't recall ever using the word 'solution'.

Absolutely right. I apologize.

> I said that shift-arrow is 
> the method that is available to do what the original poster wants to do
> (and at the level of granularity that he wants, since he noted issues with
> punctuation and white space).  I asked a few questions about how
> triple-click to select a sentence might work, since it was unclear to me at
> first glance.  (Ultimately, of course, a usability study would be required
> to determine if users prefer sentence+punctuation or
> sentence+punctuation+whitespace.)  Further, I noted that breaking the
> mental model for users who are used to the current triple-click behaviour
> may not be optimal.

This problem is of course always present when you are deviating from current 
practice. Of course we shouldn't interpret this argument stricly. This way 
you would conclude that any innovation is bound to loose against the current 
practice.

> > >  > The consequence of this kind of reasoning is that 80% MSWord users
> > >  > don't
> > >
> > > use styles, but keep formatting each paragraph explicitely.
> > > Do you have a citation to back up your claim that '80% [of] MSWord
> > > users don't use styles'?
> >
> >Sorry, I don't have many schoolbooks.
>
> I'm not asking for schoolbooks.  I'm asking you to explain where you got
> such a statistic,

> and why you think that this statistic is relevant.  If 
> you're going to quote numbers, it is valid for me to ask where it came
> from. 

You can ask, but I don't want to reply because your tendency to ignore logic 
in favour of notions annoys me.

Maurizio