Am Sonntag, den 05.03.2006, 12:57 +0100 schrieb Christian Neumair: > 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/ I'd just like to inform the list that I uploaded a zip file [1] containing the (ugly) source and the binaries. You'll need an installed GTK+ runtime from [2]. It measures the time between a click on the menubar and the click on an item and writes it to a log file. William described me the menu layout used in a private email. [1] http://manny.cluecoder.org/misc/cronos.zip [2] http://gladewin32.sourceforge.net/modules/wfdownloads/visit.php?lid=97 -- Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>
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