[Sigia-l] Link to Search Field Labels

[Alfonso Corretti]

On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 20:57, Listera wrote:
> I'm not sure what all this refers to, but what I was saying above is a
> pedestrian acknowledgement that there are many ways to unburden the user
> from having to look at tips/instructions. Few common ones:
> 
> Dates -- 
> Numbers -- 
> Area codes -- 
> Names -- 
> Auto configure -- 
> Subscription numbers -- 

> The point is that a lot of the tips/instructions I see complicate users'
> life whereas a bit of server and/or client side processing would free them
> from the rigidity of form filling.

I completely agree with this.

And I think there are two background concepts we should discuss:

First, if humans describe dates with an approximation tolerance, why
computers should force them to follow a concrete syntax? Of course,
sometimes it's required a high level of precision, but not so often.

Second, and more important, instead of a tooltip saying "Please, insert
the date in the MM/DD/YYYY format", we should prompt users with a
calendar (the traditional human-constructed system for selecting dates)
that lets the users visually select a day.

So, usability plays a key role when trying to decrease the number of
tooltips or contextual helps.

And more important, tooltips shouldn't be used to describe syntaxis or
formats expected by computers. They should be used to describe the
human-centric guidelines to fill a concrete (maybe 'rare') question
formulated as a form field. And here, the cancer website search form was
a perfect example of "rare questions" that would be benefited from
displaying descriptions in a fast, on demand, contextual way.


Cheers,

-- 
Alfonso Corretti <alfonso.corretti at hispalinux.es>
HISPALiNUX - Asociación Española de Usuarios de GNU/Linux