Re: [Usability] cheese usability review

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On Jan 4, 2008, at 9:30 PM, daniel g. siegel wrote:
> ...
> while the ui of cheese gets described as quite good by some and as
> pretty bad by others, i would like to discuss the ui and usability of
> cheese and even enhance it to be full HIG compatible. i am not a
> usability expert and the ui of cheese was done step by step without 
> even thinking about people with handicaps or other usability features.
> therefore it would be very nice if some of you could post their opinion
> about cheese and what we could do better.
> ...

Cheese looks like a cool app! I'll add a few belated comments to those 
others have already made. I tried Cheese 2.21.5 in Ubuntu Hardy.

Launching Cheese twice produced two Cheese windows. I don't think this 
should happen -- unless Cheese can handle multiple cameras, in which 
case each instance should automatically choose a different camera. 
Since I have no camera on my laptop at all, launching it a second time 
should have just focused the first instance.

I was expecting Cheese to notice that I had no camera, but it doesn't. 
Instead, it shows me a test pattern -- and not even a static one, but 
one with animated snow in the bottom right corner. This is ugly. 
Instead, I suggest leaving the preview area grey, with "No camera 
detected." or similar text centered in the middle (and ideally also a 
button for installing or troubleshooting camera setup).

Minimizing then unminimizing the Cheese window causes the test pattern 
to disappear, though it reappears when I click "Start recording". This 
seems like a bug, though it's moot if you kill the test pattern 
altogether.

Both the preview area and the gallery area have no border, which is 
unrealistic. They should have bevel borders to make them look inset.

Buttons and menu items should use Title Case: "Take a photo" should be 
"Take a Photo" (both in the button and in the menu), "Start recording" 
should be "Start Recording", "Stop recording" should be "Stop 
Recording", and "Move all to Trash" should be "Move All to Trash".

Recording for ten seconds, then clicking "Stop recording", caused 
Cheese to hang. (I stopped waiting and put Cheese out of its misery 
after four minutes.) I don't know whether this was a side-effect of not 
having a camera attached, or whether Cheese was waiting for some 
intensive video conversion that should have been done in the background 
instead.

I agree with Alan that the first menu would be better as "File" -- it 
should be for Filing the overall objects that the application deals 
with, which in this case is photos and videos. For example, I'd expect 
to see "Print..." and "Send by E-mail..." items in this menu. I 
wouldn't expect "Photo" or "Video" in this menu, because they're modes 
rather than filing actions. I like your suggestion of having "Take 
Photo" and "Record" buttons visible simultaneously, because that avoids 
the modes altogether.

In the "Edit" menu I expected, but didn't find, a "Copy" item to copy 
the selected photo to the clipboard; and a "Select All" item, to select 
all the photos and videos. I did not expect to find "Effects", because 
that's not an editing operation.

The "Effects" button claims to have the "E" access key, but this 
actually opens the "Edit" menu.

"Back" is a weird way of navigating between the Effects pane and the 
preview pane. If it's practical to show a live preview of all the 
effects (they could have a much slower framerate than the full preview, 
if necessary), you could make these panes explicit, using "Preview" and 
"Effects" tabs. Otherwise, I agree with Calum's suggestion of using a 
sidebar for the effects (though I'd put it on the right, rather than 
the left, so it can appear and disappear without the preview having to 
move).

Which effects are in use could be shown more explicitly using a 
checkbox near the top left corner of each -- though this might make 
people slower, if they think they have to click the small checkbox 
instead of clicking anywhere in the effect box. Perhaps use just a 
checkmark, not a checkbox.

I agree with Calum's point that trashing a photo/recording should not 
produce a confirmation alert, like it doesn't in Nautilus. (This alert 
is worse in Cheese than it would be in Nautilus, because the photos and 
videos do not have visible filenames. So when I'm asked "Are you sure 
you want to move "0003.ogg" to the trash?", I have no idea what 
"0003.ogg" is!)

The flash effect when taking a photo is neat, but the new photo appears 
in the gallery area with no visual explanation. Ideally, the picture 
would visibly zoom down from the preview area into the gallery.

After taking three photos, I tried to drag a box across two of them 
(starting outside both) to select them for deletion, like I can in 
Nautilus, but this didn't work. Shift+clicking didn't work for adding 
to the selection either.

When I drag a photo from Cheese to the desktop, it doesn't appear where 
I dropped it. Instead it ends up at the top left corner of the desktop, 
which is right under the Cheese window, so I can't see it. It looks 
like the drag and drop didn't work at all! I don't know whether this is 
Nautilus's fault or Cheese's fault, but either way, it needs fixing.

I think "2008-02-02 11:20 PM (2)" would be a more useful default 
filename than "0003.jpg". (It would be redundant if Cheese was running 
on a filesystem that stores creation date separately from modification 
date, but usually it won't be.)

Cheers
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/