Category Archives: Computers, User Interfaces

User Interface Annoyances: Indicator Buttons

As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.

Today’s annoying user interface is inside the elevator in my building at work. It’s not very nice to make your floor indicators (which cannot be pressed by the user) look exactly like the floor selection buttons. (Sorry about the poor quality photos.)

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Now, I consider myself a fairly sharp guy, but on the rare occasion that I actually use the elevator in my 2-story building, the indicator lights which look exactly like the floor buttons always throw me for a loop. They look like buttons that can be pressed.
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The only reason I haven’t been tricked into pressing them is because they are way up high on the panel. But still, last time I was in the elevator I had to try to press them just to make sure they were not actually buttons. They’re not. But they sure look like buttons. Why would any user interface designer in their right mind design an indicator to look exactly like a button? Is this a game they play just to mess with our minds or something?

This would be even more annoying if this were done on a software user interface. But I don’t have any examples of that to post right now. Let’s just try to avoid using buttons as indicators, shall we?

Just my opinion,

Kurt (with a tip of my hat to Joel Spolsky)

User Interface Annoyances: Blind Confirmations

As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.

But one thing that I think is a bad idea is to pop up a dialog to the user that asks them if they are sure, without giving them any more information.

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On an Internet Forum that I’m a member of we use the very popular forum software phpBB. And this evening I kept seeing this same “blind” confirmation dialog over and over again as I was making various unrelated configuration changes to my account profile. If something is worthy of an “are you sure you want to do this” type of dialog, then surely telling the user what they are about to do and why it could be bad is also worthy of mentioning? When I try to close Word without saving my document, it doesn’t just say “Are you sure?”. It says something more along the lines of “Don’t you want to save your document before closing Word?”.

Just my opinion,

Kurt (with a tip of my hat to Joel Spolsky)

User Interface Annoyances: Labeled Toggle Buttons

As a software programmer, I feel the need to make the user happy so that they will like my product. We all just want to be loved, right? In order to make the user of my software happy, the user interface must not be annoying and the whole user experience must be positive. I personally have lots of opinions about what should and should not be done in a user interface, and I’m sure the whole world will not be totally in agreement with all of my opinions, and that’s fine. We can agree to disagree.

But one thing that I think is a bad idea is to use a toggle button to turn on or off a certain feature and to put a text or image label that states the current value of the feature onto that toggle button. Was that sentence confusing? Well, so is a labeled toggle button! And what’s the last thing you want your user interface to do? Confuse the user!

.Labeled Toggle Button from PrintKey 2000

I use PrintKey 2000 as my free screen capture software. Yeah, it’s old and outdated, but it works for me and I haven’t felt the need to go out searching for a replacement. Hey, if it ain’t broke …

All of the big fat buttons across the top actually do what their label says … all except for one, that is. The button labeled “OFF” does NOT actually turn something OFF. It does just the opposite of turning something OFF. It turns something ON. It’s a toggle button for the Auto Save feature and the current state of the Auto Save feature is OFF, so when you click on the button labeled OFF, it will turn the Auto Save feature ON and change the label on the button to read ON.

So the button is telling the user the current value of the feature, not what action the button will perform when pressed. But users are used to buttons doing what their label says. The Print button prints, the Save button saves, etc. But this one button acts differently than all other buttons in the world?!? Why? This sort of user interface behavior is not intuitive to most users and should be avoided.

Solution: If the value of the feature were placed into a text field that is separate but adjacent to the toggle button and the toggle button was labeled something like “Auto Save”, that would be just fine. It might be even better if the button label were “Toggle Auto Save”, but I realize that might be too wordy. Another solution would be for features that can be toggled, to forgo buttons altogether and use checkboxes with labels instead. A checkbox labeled “Auto Save” would turn the feature on when the box is checked and vise-versa. I think most users would find that intuitive.

Just my opinion,

Kurt

Google AdSense Video Units Now Available

I’m going to attempt to place a Google AdSense Video Unit into this blog post. I have no idea what the actual content of the video will be, but it is supposed to be targeted specifically to match other content on this website. I imagine it will contain something related to woodworking or the Space Program.

[Google AdSense Video Unit removed due to inappropriate and usually offending content!]

Update: That didn’t originally work too well. WordPress, my blog software trashed the javascript code I pasted in. I had to directly modify the mySql database entry to get it to work.

Update 2: Wow, the videos that were showing up here were not related to woodworking or the Space Program at all! Many of them were quite offending, so I removed the video unit. I guess Google has some more work to do in this area. Good luck, Google!

Kurt

Dare I put down blogs in my own blog?

I’m noticing that many of the Internet Blogs that I come across fall into one of two categories … neither of which seems to me to be of much value in the grand scheme of things. My own blog that you’re reading right now is no exception.
There are the “all about me” blogs which simply tell the world about the author and the author’s family and the author’s life and things that the author has done and accomplished. (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=32) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=35) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=38) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=41) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=43) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=53) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=67) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=74) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=77) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=88) (http://leucht.com/blog/?p=112)

Then there are the “this is cool” blogs which simply tell the world about cool websites or cool products or whatever. (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=7) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=8) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=103) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=107) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=110) (http://www.leucht.com/blog/?p=114)

Huh, I just realized that I have about twice as many “all about me” posts as I have “this is cool” posts. Guess I’m a little more vain that I was hoping.

What’s the real benefit to society of an “all about me” blog, anyways? Our families and friends might get a kick out of reading them, but we could really take care of that by sending them emails and calling them more often. Don’t we really publish “all about me” content just to make ourselves feel better?

And don’t get me started on all the “this is cool” blogs out there. I could spend 24 hours a day looking at all the cool sites that bloggers try to get me to check out. And I agree that many of them are very very cool. But the Internet is not getting any smaller last time I checked, while at the same time my waking hours still remain constant. It’s a losing battle. I need a larger and larger filter to keep me focused and to minimize my time online. It’s hopeless for me to try to check out all the cool sites that are out there and to add the coolest ones to my ever expanding list of cool bookmarks.

How huge and how watered down will the Internet have to get before the general public starts losing interest?

Kurt