[Sigia-l] Rollover Question (Web 2.0)

[David (Heller) Malouf]

And what I'm saying is that the notion of "intuitive" has very severe
limitations and thinking of Tool Tips as a plan B is misleading.

I can't imagine a single icon I would put on a screen that I wouldn't want
to add a tool tip for where I didn't have an attached label, and I tried to
express why/where you can't have labels on every icon. 

-- dave


On 9/29/06, Todd Warfel <lists at toddwarfel.com> wrote:

On Sep 29, 2006, at 8:40 AM, David ((Heller)) Malouf wrote:

> I understand what Todd is saying about not relying on them, but
> when I think
> about where I use them, I can't imagine the system being learnable 
> without
> them.
>
> [...]
>
> Anyway, to me tooltips are a part of good design, not a crutch of bad
> design. Because good design of complex applications requires more than
> intuition, it requires learning through discoverability.

What I'm saying is that "great design" would use tooltips as a Plan B
– strive for an intuitive design that doesn't need them. They are
useful, but the design shouldn't depend on them.


Cheers!

Todd R. Warfel
Partner, Design & Usability Specialist
Messagefirst | designing and usability consulting
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-- 
David (Heller) Malouf 
dave.ixd at gmail.com
http://synapticburn.com/