User Interface Design

[Candy]

I was zapping around a bit until something mentioned Fitt's Law. Never having heard of it, I googled it and found out it's a guideline for UI design.

http://www.asktog.com/columns/022Design ... Fitts.html

What do you think of it? Anybody used it?

[Pype.Clicker]

yep. i heard of it ... and i at least use it by the fact XMMS is top-left of my screen and my "start menu" is drop-down on the screen background.

plus i use config. that allows me to move windows without reaching the window bar (ALT+drag).

((just gimp'ing something and i'm back))

[distantvoices]

snogging with the gimp? eeks. lucky mouse (klickklick)*rofl*

actually, I've heard of it often. It is also often said that the GUI design of MacOS approached and respected the rules of Fitts most.

[Pype.Clicker]

hm. don't work as nice as i'd have like it to ...

esp. as soon as i try to fit the 2nd level of the menu, it starts getting completely useless.

[mystran]

If one thinks about it, one might notice that most of us have probably had first-hand experience with radial menus, because they actually used in the forbidden land of real usability: games.

It's funny. If you take a random game that got the infamous "the interface is a bit klumsy" comment from every other reviewer, and then compare it with what you have on your regular desktop, you really notice how unusable average desktop is.

[Candy]

If one thinks about it, one might notice that most of us have probably had first-hand experience with radial menus, because they actually used in the forbidden land of real usability: games.

It's funny. If you take a random game that got the infamous "the interface is a bit klumsy" comment from every other reviewer, and then compare it with what you have on your regular desktop, you really notice how unusable average desktop is.

That's in fact very true... The Sims use the radial menu with a second level, which is very usable, except that they reorder the items constantly, which removes a part of the benefit.

The point with games and desktops is however that you have one desktop on which all applications must conform to a decent sort of handling, to look and behave similar, so the demands put up by the UI designer can't be too high or nobody'd make it. This instantly limits the UI designer to something a lot worse than the game designer can do, namely the least complex subset to implement. The game designer can implement anything he damn well pleases, since it's his game and he doesn't need to conform, nor does anybody else need to conform to him.

[Solar]

Game interfaces are closed systems, not a generic API. You have a set of functions that must be made accessable, and you know that these functions will not change. (Well, yes, there are generic 3D engines and expandable game frameworks, but you get the idea.)

An OS GUI must, on the other side, be something generic, which the web browser programmer, the graphics app programmer and the word processor programmer can use to make the ever-changing functions of their respective applications accessable.

Add to that, if your goal is to get widespread acceptance, that classic desktop UI concepts have ceased to be intuitive "because it looks like my desk", and became useful "because it looks more or less just like that other OS".

It's painful to accept, but I believe UI concepts can only be evolved slowly. Radical revolutions just won't make it, because they would confuse people. Just consider what kind of flamewar you get when trying to get the idea of the MacOS / AmigaOS global menu bar across with an audience of Windows / Linux users...

[Pype.Clicker]

man, i can remember of the first time i installed win 3.1 and were prompted for a tutorial about using the mouse ... that sounded like

"this small arrow is your mouse cursor. By holding the mouse in your hand and moving it, you can point to different regions of the screen.

Move now the cursor into the 3inch-wide square at the bottom-right of the screen or press enter to continue"

so much for "intuitive" stuff.

But you all know i'm doing an OS because i want the ability to experiment breaking-new user interface, don't you