[IxDA Discuss] Meaningful labels

[Jim Drew / CFM Designs]

"jackbellis.com" <jackbellis at hotmail.com> writes:

>When abstracted one level to the matter of "whose responsibility is it, "
>this is a crucial Ix issue, to me at least.

In the end, it's like what I tell people when I teach couples 
dancing: if the follow messes up, it's the leader's fault, because 
the follow only did what the leader told them to.

Ultimately, the "responsibility" for this failure -- for fixing it -- 
falls on the software makers.  It's the user's "fault" that she 
didn't read or process the state properly, but it's our 
responsibility to recognize that and make sure it's easier for her to 
process it or that she doesn't end up in that state to begin with.


>But more importantly, I wonder if there might be a contributing factor
>regarding the library. I can't be sure what's happening in the following:
>
>             > >She then tried to add more content to her library, 
>but when she checked
>             > >the library, she found that the content was not there.
>
>I'm picturing that the user clicks on a control to Add Content to Library,
>and the search is the vehicle for seeking and specifiying the content to
>add.

Sort of.  There are (similar, yet with differences) search fields in 
both the user's library and in the content repository, with "Add" 
buttons in the repository.


>Yes, the user might be oblivious to the "There were no results..." message,
>but I have to wonder if the relationship between the "add" function and the
>"what I'm adding" is not strong enough. Is it possible that the order
>of operation is exactly opposite in her mind? That is, she thinks a button
>starts a process, whereas in your actual system it uses prior results and
>ends a process?

I'm not sure I follow, but I don't think that's the case.  Here, it 
was that the previous library search was retained until manually 
cleared, and the user forgot that she had criteria in use.


>Is the problem possibly that your query constraints are not explicitly
>reflected in the search results listing (a long-standing Neilsen 
>recommendation, I think:
>"Results for only items where WIDGETS less than 3").

Hmm, that's an interesting idea.  Right now, the user has to read the 
message and then find the search box to find out why there are no 
results.


>At a more abstract level, would code that detects and responds to the same
>action n times (three?) in a row be too much to ask one of these days? I
>call such a level, whether detecting too frequent or too rare usage, a
>"coach" model.

That's something I've advocated for in a few situations.  Rather than 
requiring the user to click a DNSA box to stop an educative alert 
from showing, do that for them after a few rounds of seeing it.
-- 

-----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
Jim Drew		   Seattle, WA		   cfmdesigns at earthlink.net
    http://home.earthlink.net/~rubberize/Weblog/index.html (Update: 6/27)
		(Subject: Riding the Vertical Broomstick)