Re: [Usability] Usability Digest, Vol 60, Issue 7

[Anton Kerezov <ankere gmail com>]

On Sun, Apr 19, 2009 at 10:19 AM, Jacob Beauregard <deadowlsurvivor gmail com> wrote:

With Empathy:
Chat
-New Conversation...
-View Previous Conversations
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-Add Contact...
-Show Offline Contacts
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-Quit

Edit
-Accounts
-Personal Information
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-Preferences

Room
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-Join New
-Join Favorites
-????????
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-Manage Favorites


Help
-Contents
-About

Everything with usability is very much a matter of organization. There
are an infinite number of ways to present organization to the user. The
question is how can you incorporate your menu idea and an organization
of Empathy's functionality (or without a menu at all) and have it be an
overall improvement in the current organization?

I honestly have no clue, but I do realize an improvement in your menu
idea, but have also realized areas of possible conflict with current
models of organization. How to resolve the conflicts is the question.

You are right - everything is a matter of organization. I proposed to make the sub menus appear in the panel and the sub-sub menus to show as interactive pop-ups. But that is only for compatibility with the old menu system.

There could be a specific HIG rules that make the grouping in such a way that the sub menus items are less and more of the commands are shown in the interactive pop-ups. This will let the UI designers expose only what is highly necessary and to leave the less uesed options for the popups or other ways of presentatio like dialgs.

I think that if the WM is reliable enough or we don't have problems with Alt+F4 we can even remove the Quit command (not the one from the chat menu). Even now I'm not sure why it exists (btw it has almost nothing to do with files).

So about the conflicts (which I know of):
- Not enough space to fit all menuiems in the compat mode.
- May make some old shcool users confused in the beginning.
- .... any futrher popolsals?
 

-- 
A.K.