Re: [Usability] Three dialog problems

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Feb 21, 2007, at 10:36 AM, Rodney Dawes wrote:
> ...
> One thing that has come up in usability testing in the Novell 
> Cambridge, MA office, is that the end users who we ended up testing 
> that were Mac users, did Drag & Drop, while those that were Windows 
> users, did Right Click.
>
> Both of them are originally designed to be "advanced" user actions, to
> speed up the flow of interaction.

Where did you get the idea that Apple designed drag-and-drop to be an 
advanced action? It has always been the only way to move files from one 
folder to another, for example. (Other than using the Terminal or a 
third-party file manager.)

> However, given that almost all users do them now, trying to call them 
> advanced, and pushing to avoid them, is probably not the best interest 
> to have.

I've found that the easiest answer for people who ask me "left or right 
button?" every few seconds is "just use the left button for 
everything".

> Why isn't there a check box outside the right-click menu to show 
> hidden files? :)
> ...

There should be, in a menu that also contains a "Connect to Server..." 
item plus "Eject" items for each removable device. (If you're going to 
have a separate filepicker at all, forcing people back to the file 
manager for those actions is just being aggravating.)

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/