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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Few miscellaneous suggestions
From:       "Jamethiel Knorth" <jamethknorth () hotmail ! com>
Date:       2004-07-25 6:14:21
Message-ID: BAY7-F7Y2NLR1nQ67tm00011e5e () hotmail ! com
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>From: Brad Hards <bhards@bigpond.net.au>
>Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 14:06:31 +1000
>
>On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 05:53 am, James Richard Tyrer wrote:
> > A simple metric would be to decompose it into three matrices one for 
>each
> > color, take the two dimensional FFT of each one.  You can obtain the
> > digital equivalent to a volume under each FFT by a scalar addition of 
>all
> > of the entries in each FFT result matrix.  So that icons of different 
>sizes
> > can be compared, you actually want the average so you should normalize 
>the
> > sum by dividing it by the number of scalers summed (the area of the icon 
>in
> > square pixels).  Then take the square root of the sum of the squares of
> > these three (normalized) scalar sums and you will have a very rough 
>metric
> > of the information contained in an icon. Note that for a first example, 
>it
> > should be obvious that a gray square would have a value of 0 indicating
> > that it had no information.
>You are still missing my point that the useability of a desktop is not only 
>a
>function of the information in each icon. The screen doesn't have equal
>importance at all areas - you'd need to apply some form of weighting
>function.
>
>Even at the icon level, you're still incorrect in assuming that something 
>that
>has a wide range of frequencies in each colour is going to be more useable
>than something that has less. That would mean that the more garish an icon,
>the more useable it is! I think that grey'd out icons actually convey
>information to the user, but by the frequency measure, an icon set without
>grey'd out icons would be considered more useable. Further, why do you 
>think
>that root-sum-squares of the per-colour scalar sums is meaningful in 
>general?
>We know that men and women perceive colour differently. So I don't seen 
>even
>a meaningful measure of how useful an icon is (even with some opinion based
>weighting of a FFT of a YUV representation).
>
>Real life test results of various theme options, using the same test tasks
>(with the same apps, same displays, statistically significant test
>population, etc) is objective. Anything less is opinion.

Arguing that everything which isn't backed by a study is useless is not 
useful. If we decide to do nothing whenever we don't have a study, we will 
never do anything. And, even besides that, studies are commonly wrong and 
should only ever be one element involved in a decision.

The fact is, accuracte tests are virtually non-existent, and a test good 
enough to be considered infallible is exorbidantly expensive. We work with 
what we have, and what we have does not usually include massive usability 
testing.

Just because you were responding to someone who said 'information theory' 
doesn't mean it isn't a basic usability rule that more information is more 
confusing to users. If we are ignoring some fundamental things like that 
(which have been backed up by studies) we might as well not have this list 
because we cannot afford to do a study for everything we do.

Keramik does give more information. The window border includes more lines, 
shapes, and gradients. This is easily provable. Plastik gives the same 
amount of useful information because both Keramik and Plastik have the exact 
same button set.

The same thing goes for the widget style, in which Keramik buttons ARE more 
complex, while Plastik buttons convey the identical purpose with less 
information.

Since Plastik has a solid outline with no frills around all widgets, if 
contrast is an issue it is due to the color scheme more than the widget 
style.

This doesn't mean that we should just switch to Plastik right now; the 
documentation thing is still a major issue. I'd have to say that we 
shouldn't switch to Plastik for 3.3 because it is too close to the deadline 
right now, there is too much documentation which will be out-of-date, and 
because it will represent a sweeping change between two minor version 
numbers in a system.

If the switch were to be made, I would say it should be made more for 
reasons of public outcry than usability. The fact is, window decoration 
styles are mostly a subjective issue, and there are a ton of people vocally 
requesting the change. It's a good thing to listen to the user-base, 
especially when the impact on usability is so incredibly minor.

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