[Usability] Cascading Menus, Context Menus, and Moving Files

[Jacob Beauregard <jake13jake comcast net>]

I was browsing looking for some usability studies on cascading menus the other 
day (If you didn't know, I hate cascading menus). I found this link.

http://surfmind.com/masters/screens/the_making_of_a_visualization.html

The information that's on this page, and the visualization of it, could 
probably bring someone who's mind is on usability, into micro-usability.

For instance, in the diagrams, the users almost always move the mouse toward 
the center of a menu before continuing. This is a strategy in menu browsing, 
and eliminating the need for it could subconsciously make the interface feel 
more usable. Why not center menus under the mouse rather than the traditional 
method of drawing it right of the mouse? The one exception for this of 
course, would be if centering a menu under a mouse would interfere with the 
visibility of the menu.

Also to note, is the distance a user has to move the mouse to reach a new 
menu. Not only that, but also to reach the central area of a new menu. This 
increases the chance that the user will make an error, and also increases the 
amount of time the user takes to reach a desired item (this is why I hate 
cascading menus). Also noted on the web page is a strategy for moving the 
mouse such long distances in a cascading menu.

When my mom's digital camera wouldn't connect to Windows 98, I gave her my 
desktop computer that uses GNOME. So I have to mention a few more things 
about context menus that she gave her a hard time. Mostly, she wants to be 
able to easily organize her photos in the file system. She blames her 
problems on GNOME even though she obviously had never done the same thing on 
Windows. Please keep in mind that all of the following is based on the Ubuntu 
Feisty packages, so if you can't duplicate it with the latest GNOME, don't 
shoot me.

1. She was confused about what the context menus were referring to. One 
solution would be to give context menus a header as to what they are 
referring to. KDE does this for many panel applets and the system tray 
already, but nothing else. GNOME doesn't have any similar behavior. It could 
also be considered whether sub-headers would be useful, but at this point I'm 
only recommending a header that states what the context menu is for.

2. When I was trying to show her how to copy/cut/paste multiple files at the 
same time, she continuously made the error of right clicking on whitespace 
and therefore lost the selection she had made. Considering how many files she 
was copying, this wasted a lot of time. I wouldn't immediately be able to 
think of a solution for this.

3. When she tried dragging photos into a folder, the size of the thumbnail 
made it impossible to see whether or not the folder was highlighted. I would 
categorize this as a bug, and I wouldn't know if its fixed because I don't 
know if Ubuntu, the distribution that I use for her computer, has the latest 
GNOME packages.

4. "Move to Trash" in the context menu confused her, because she is familiar 
with calling it delete. She was especially confused because I told her 
to "delete" the folders she had successfully moved all of the files out of 
because they were now empty and useless. I'm not saying this should change, 
though someone might have a bright idea of how to end this confusion. I can 
say though, it would have been beneficial for there to have been a visual cue 
to whether or not the folder was empty, as the folder she was moving to the 
trash was quite similarly named to another folder.

5. When getting the message that moving files to a folder would overwrite 
already existing files, she didn't know what to do. If I hadn't told her to 
say skip and rename the files, she would have overwritten the files with the 
same name. This presents a problem with recoverability in moving files. I 
would suggest possibly making a section in the trash for files that were 
overwritten from the clipboard and from drag & drop behavior.

The other problem with the overwrite dialog. It does not guide the user 
through what they can do to move the file successfully. The user is presented 
with: Skip All, Replace All, Skip, Replace. Even worse, the user is presented 
with the question in BOLD, "Do you want to replace it?" which may have lead 
her to click "Replace" and permanently lose a large number of her photos. The 
mentioning of overwriting the contents, even if she knew what that meant, 
wasn't in bold.

I would suggest displaying thumbnails for both files in the dialog that the 
user can open so that the user can see the difference between the files. I 
would also STRONGLY suggest giving the option to rename the file. This option 
should be failsafe, as it should not allow the user to choose another 
filename that already exists, and should inform them if they do so.

Another option would be to automatically rename all files, such that on a 
collision with 00002.jpg, it will just name the file 00002_2.jpg, and on 
collision 00003.jpg, it will just name the file 00003_2.jpg.

Anyways, hope all of this info is useful. Please don't call my mom an idiot.