Re: [Usability] Graphical selection of text subtitles in Totem

["Diego Moya" <turingt gmail com>]

Why not creating a paper prototype and testing it on real people?

Take some screenshots of Totem with a loaded movie, the menus, and the
file chooser opened at the relevant folder with the subtitle files. An
print them all.

Then hand the first one to four of five friends, and ask them how they
would solve the task of adding subtitles to the movie. As they go on
selecting parts of the interface, you play the computer role showing
what piece of paper would show after each action of the user.

Have them speaking aloud what they have in mind at each moment, and
you'll have insight of the discoverability and easy of use of your UI
design.

Given that people has reported problems knowing that this feature
exists, my guess is that the "subtitle selection" should be a plain
button right on the main interface, which opens a menu showing the
autodetected files, and with an extra option to "Import subtitles from
file...". An option hidden under a disclosure in the already hidden
file chooser, is as good as an nonexistent option.



On 06/01/07, Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie> wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jan 2007, Bastien Nocera wrote:
>
> > Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2007 16:24:05 +0000
> > From: Bastien Nocera <hadess hadess net>
> > To: usability gnome org
> > Subject: [Usability] Graphical selection of text subtitles in Totem
> >
> > Hello, and happy new year to all,
> >
> > Totem has the ability to load text subtitles automatically, currently
> > loading the text subtitle file with a known suffix, and with the same
> > name as the movie (ie. test.avi would try to load test.srt, or test.sub
> > as subtitles).
> >
> > People have requested being able to load the subtitle manually, from
> > another location, which was implemented at:
> > http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165981
> >
> > I'm not very happy with the UI though, and would like comments on how to
> > make it as unobtrusive as possible, while being discoverable.
> Based on that premise I would think more along the lines of some kind of
> extra entry in the file chooser, perhaps hidden behind a disclosure
> triangle or behind some kind of options button.  Good think the extra
> files can be detected automatically in most cases.  I liked the suggestion
> of being able to drop a subtitles file onto the currently playing video.