[Sigia-l] Re: log as link to home (Christina Wodtke)

[Christopher Fahey [askrom]]

> There is an old IBM piece about this and other issues 
> relating to 'what users don't know'
>
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/us-tricks/?dwzone=usabilit
y#h11294

Hmm, some odd parts in that article:

(1)
<quote>Suggestion: If you must use rollover menus, at least make them
persistent, so that a click on the high-level menu anchors the pop-up
menu until the user's next click. I noticed that many users did make
that initial click on the menu option, even with the initial version of
the design where it had no effect. The developers changed the design to
support the way that users had behaved in testing, and although we
didn't have the chance to usability test the refined design, even the
developers found this approach easier to use. Yes, this approach
requires two clicks instead of one, so it's a trade-off: Most users pay
a very small price (in terms of effort) to avoid a few users paying a
huge one.</quote>

She seems to not know about the technique of using Javascript (or
Actionscript or whatever) to wait a half-second before turning off a
roll-over menu or switching to another menu option. If a user is moving
diagonally from a main menu item to a cascaded submenu item, and if that
path crosses through "un-hot" space,  the delay effect will correct for
that idiosyncrasy and permit the user to reach the destination zone
(this is already part of operating system menu behavior). Her advice to
require a second click to turn off the menu is, to me, exactly the same
amount annoying as the original problem. 

In any event, she's right that they are hard to use even with the
time-delay fix. I think that anyone who uses a cascading menu system
ought to think of the menus as 'shortcuts' for power users, and that
they should provide redundant secondary and tertiary navigations
elsewhere on the page.

(2)
<quote>This one applies to all software, not just Web sites: The vast
majority of users doesn't realize that the arrow keys can be used to
navigate a drop-down list. In one study, I watched 39 users fill out
order forms, and only one used the arrow keys. Everyone else used the
mouse. ... And a few users (I estimate 5-10%) don't even know about the
tab key, and use the mouse for all field-to-field navigation --
especially painful to watch!</quote>

This, in my experience, is a massive understatement. Of course it
depends on the exact audience in question, but 5-10% seems awful low for
almost any group. I know computer programmers who mouse from field to
field!

-Cf

[christopher eli fahey]
art: http://www.graphpaper.com
sci: http://www.askrom.com
biz: http://www.behaviordesign.com