Delicious LiveJournal Links for 10-1-2010

[andrewducker]

• Benefits to be replaced by universal credit. I support the basic idea, less forms to fill. Worried about implementation.
  (tags: benefits welfare government bureaucracy uk)
• Hotel's Curvature Causes Deathray Effect
  (tags: hotel weaponry funny architecture)
• Minimum wage up, new minimum for apprentices, adult rate from 21 rather than 22
• Only 1.7% of sites blocked by Scandinavia's child-porn filters are actually child porn
  (tags: censorship scandinavia)
• Babies born without immune system given it through gene treatment
  (tags: genetics medicine immune_system)
• XMarks considering becoming a paid service. Sign up here.
  (tags: xmarks)
• Developers - please try and remember that nobody reads your dialog boxes.
  (tags: ui ux windows programming)
• Homophobia. I sincerely hope that when you tell your grandchildren we treated people this way they don't believe you.
  (tags: homophobia usa lgbt)
• Feeling sorry for David Miliband. Almost.
  (tags: politics uk labour)
• Virgin Broadband doubles its upload speed. Yay!
  (tags: virgin broadband)
• A graph of public expenditure in the UK over time, which you can fiddle with the settings of. Fascinating.
  I hadn't expected Health to have gone up by quite that much.
  (tags: spending government uk)
• Audiences want more realistic portrayal of gay people
  (tags: gay lgbt media tv)

Comments

RE: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

It's true that people don't read them. I try to keep mine to a minimum and have the app just do what you'd expect it to (although what I'd expect it to do, what the boss expects it to do and what the users expect it to do aren't always the same thing).

But sometimes you need some way of telling the user either a) they've been really dumb or b) something's gone wrong. I did, for a while in an internal test version, swap an OK and Cancel button round and ended up with the boss reporting a bug because it "wasn't working properly and he couldn't figure out why". He hadn't even noticed that the OK and Cancel were back to front - just clicked like an automaton.

But if not dialog boxes, then what instead? That's the thing I really hoped the article would address and didn't.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Minimum wage up, new minimum for apprentices, adult rate from 21 rather than 22

Good. The attitude to adulthood in this country has always pissed me off. Hooray! You're 18! You're an adult and can vote! But you aren't entitled to an adult wage. But you'll still have to pay tax. And we will decide whether to use that tax to support your education based on how much your parents earn. So really, you are still a child.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that dialog box is messy. But like a commenter there says, what are you going to use instead of a dialog box? You can and should improve UX, but there does come a point where it's PEBCAK.

[andrewducker]

You do the right thing, and then tell them you did it.

This is why more and more applications are switching to autoupdate rather than asking you to download the latest version.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely. Either a certain level of pay is enough to live on, or it isn't.

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

A good HIG should specify a standard order for OK/Cancel buttons. Because that's stuff your spacial memory learns.

What I find interest is how dependent on colour I am. I often switch to the wrong app because both icons are the same general colour.

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[andrewducker]

You just do the right thing, and then tell people you did it. If they don#t read stuff then they automatically get the fixed version, because they didn't care.

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Oh I know, I only swapped the buttons to see what would happen - and because the boss is notoriously bad at reading anything. I'm consistent normally.

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

Agreed for the compatibility assistant ones in the article but if people just don't read dialog boxes then what to do for stuff like "Are you sure you want to overwrite the file?" where there is no right and wrong but there are consequences?

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

TBH that would have got me too.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

There is a very nice framework on OS X that a LOT of applications are using.

When it detects an update, it pops up a dialog box which says pretty much:

New version available!
[Download and install] [Cancel]

You click it, and it does all the rest for you. It's ace :)

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[andrewducker]

Not me - I use keyboard shortcuts :->

[andrewducker]

Yup - VLC and uTorrent both use something like that.

I bet the majority of users just click "cancel" though.

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[andrewducker]

You ask them, and they have to live with it. But as most people reflexively hit "cancel" that's not so much of a problem, because when they go to save it'll tell them they have unsaved changes.

[andrewducker]

I like the way that Android handles this - checking occasionally for updates, and then just popping up a notification in the bar telling you that you have 17 applciation updates.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Then they are numpties and should be told to put the computer back in the box and return it...

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Some do. Then they grouse to $techsupport about 'this rubbish programme that keeps asking me questions make it go away waaah, etc.'

He said, with some feeling.

Re: Nobody reads dialog boxes

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

... and they'll be stuck in a loop until they read something!!

[broin.livejournal.com]

You shouldn't have to understand computers to use computers. =)

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

An anti-homophobia project you might be interested in is We Got Your Back:

http://wegotyourbackproject.wordpress.com/mission-statement/

And another one is It Gets Better:

http://www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject

[andrewducker]

Totally agree. One thing that things like iPhone and Android have made clear is that computers can be a lot easier than they currently are.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

No, you shouldn't have to understand their innards. You should, however, understand how to interact with them, the same way you need to know that an oven has a temperature dial. Granted, shitty UI exists everywhere (eg, washing machines that have a dial with numbers and then a KEY for them alongside it -- WTF???) -- but equally, users need to pay attention to what is presented to them.