Re: [Usability] Rhythmbox: Why does unpressing play feel so awkward when you want to pause the music?

[Calum Benson <Calum Benson Sun COM>]

On 5 Sep 2008, at 19:26, Jacob Beauregard wrote:

> Could my prior use of other media players seriously be this deeply  
> ingrained in my head? I'm doubtful. What are the other possibilities?

Donald Norman would describe what you're experiencing in terms of "the  
gulf of execution"[1].  Your goal is to pause (or stop) the music, so  
your gut reaction is to look for a pause/stop button.  But there isn't  
one, so the gulf is widened.

Partly this probably is due to your past experience with other media  
players, but most likely also with GUIs generally-- GUIs tend to  
represent actions as buttons; binary toggles are normally reserved for  
settings and properties.  What do you do when you want to stop other  
continuous operations, like a file transfer or a print job?  You press  
the "Stop" (or "Cancel") button, you don't un-press the Start button :)

Cheeri,
Calum.

--
CALUM BENSON, Usability Engineer       Sun Microsystems Ireland
mailto:calum benson sun com            GNOME Desktop Team
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Sun Microsystems