Am Samstag, den 04.03.2006, 19:03 -0800 schrieb William Szilveszter: > I am currently in the process of designing a true experiment for my > undergraduate studies in psychology. I am interested in providing > experimental research in the field of ergonomics and computer usability. > > Currently my aim is to show the effectiveness of section 4) Menus. The > experiment will focus on menu icons and whether they truly interfere > with reaction times. My aim is very simple, however I will be > controlling for a number of variables and if successful, anticipate some > empirical research that will provide a real base to the GNOME HIG. > > My experiment however does require a simple program that will run on > Win32 and be a self contained .EXE (program would be running on Windows > 2000, most likely SP4). The program will require nothing more than 4 to > 5 menu entries (content is moot and entries such as file, open, help, > etc. are more than worthy). The menu entries will need to be a little > more organized and can be based off a simple mock up that is yet to be > made. The program needs to simply provide a function where the click of > the drop down menu commences a clock and the clicking of the proper menu > entry stops it, recording it to a file in order of attempts. I lack > programming experience and therefore am unable to create it, and that is > why I am asking the community. > > I will have all permanent information soon, but wanted to get this > aspect out there. I hope that my time allows me to further explore > usability in a true experimental arena and that I may provide more > concrete data as to the effectiveness of not but one aspect of the GNOME > HIG, but the entire guideline. Please if anyone is interested contact me > at this email. I sent this to the group already, but it sits, awaiting > to be reviewed since I wasn't a member of the mailing list. Apologies > for the "spam." Thanks for your email! We appreciate your involvement, and your interest in usability. This topic is obviously tightly related to psychology and people's ways of making decisions. Inside the GNOME project we have an ongoing discussion whether icons increase usability or - when used excessively - don't help much but rather confuse users. Some claim that you can read text more quickly than figuring out what an icon means [1]. I am able and willing to help you with this program, feel free to drop me an email with the precise requirements, or - assuming the design details are of general interest - publish them here on the list. My personal opinion is that it would be very, very interesting to test how quickly people find a particular function with icons completely turned off, with icons turned on only for a particular selection of functions, where the likelyhood that a particular function is needed should be incorporated, and with icons turned on for all menu entries. If you have enough resources, you may also want to permute the icons which have menu items. We're looking forward to your further steps, and encourage you to publish more information on the experiment you plan. [1] http://www.tigert.com/archives/2005/09/15/ive-created-a-monster/ -- Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: Dies ist ein digital signierter Nachrichtenteil