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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Consistency/Look&Feel in renamedlg
From:       Brad Hards <bhards () bigpond ! net ! au>
Date:       2003-03-30 20:15:33
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On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 01:44, Fabian Wolf wrote:
> On Sunday 30 March 2003 11:47, Brad Hards wrote:
> > The "Source File" is a confusing concept. Source of what?
>
> True that, but what could be used instead?
> "New file" ? - Naw, it could be older!
> "File that is going to replace the existing file" ? - Kinda long, isn't it?
> "File about to be copied" ? - Same as above, too long.
Heh, if I had a better suggestion I would have made it :=)
Perhaps "Current document" or "Working File"?

> It's just that I can't think of anything better than "Source" either.
> Can we expect the user to understand what is meant with "Source"?
> How much stupidity of the user do we have to take into account and
> workaround?
I just spent a few weeks working through Donald A. Norman's "The Design of 
Everyday Things" [MIT Press, ISBN: 0-262-64037-6; there is also a hardback 
version called "The Psychology of Everyday Things" ]. He makes some pretty 
compelling arguments (and summarises other people's arguments). One of the 
main issues is about "slips" - have you ever got something really basic wrong 
- - like locking keys in your house or car, or not being able to remember 
someone's name (usually because you were thinking of something else at the 
time?). Its not stupidity (at least, it isn't when I do it :-), it is just a 
fact of life.
And when people get this one wrong, they are going to trash work, usually 
irrecoverably, which is one of the issues associated with good GUI design.

> Might it be helpful to drop the "existing" and "source"- label and make the
> "source" semi-transparent or some other effect to show that it's not
> existent at the destination folder rather than being about to be copied?
Perhaps the concept should be "current document, rather than source file".  I 
did like the arrow too, although obviously the CPU load for the animation 
would need to be tunable for low performance machines.

> Sometimes I think we care too much about how users might interpret dialogs
> - they just need to get used to it...
Read Norman's book - standardisation is a useful technique, but people will 
still get it wrong occasionally, and standard approaches still don't help 
when people are learning them.

Brad
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