Re: [Usability] How to make GNOME better for Netbooks?

[Calum Benson <calum benson oracle com>]

On 20/04/2010 04:09, Frederik Nnaji wrote:
> here on the kickoff notes:
> on the proposed UI Pattern category designated "search", one example
> solution already targeted in the notes was "Autocompletion".
> a friendlier name might be "find as you type", which could be
> abbreviated to FAST instead of FAYT, so that users may remember that
> solution better and try to discover it all over the place intuitively.

Well, the HIG and pattern library are primarily aimed at developers and 
designers. So for those documents, we ought to pick the terms that 
developers and designers use to describe those features.

These aren't necessarily the same as the terms that we will use in 
online help and other user documentation, where "find as you type" might 
indeed be a good option. (It's certainly nice when the terms *are* the 
same... but unfortunately, new widgets and API are often developed 
without consulting docs and usability people, and those developers' 
choices tend to become the 'lingua franca'.)

Your comment does raise an interesting question, though, which is 
whether individual UI patterns should include a terminology section. 
Currently GUI object and action terms are defined in Appendix A of the 
Documentation Style Guide:
<http://library.gnome.org/devel/gdp-style-guide/stable/wordlist.html.en>

There's certainly a maintenance advantage in having that information 
collected in a single place, and I guess our docs writers might prefer 
to keep it that way.  But it's certainly worth discussing with them.

Cheeri,
Calum.


--
CALUM BENSON, Interaction Designer     Oracle Corporation, Ireland
mailto:calum.benson at oracle.com      Solaris Desktop Group
http://blogs.sun.com/calum             +353 1 819 9771

Any opinions are personal and not necessarily those of Oracle Corp.