Re: Red Button - O MY! (end of that story - for now) - and NEW question

[Kathleen MacDowell <kathleen -at- writefortheuser -dot- com>]

Congratulations, Deborah. That's a huge step that will make the
documentation task so much easier.

What did they do about the menu colors?

Re usability question: I recall a discussion of no greater than three levels
at at time in menus. I think that was one of Jakob Nielsen's
recommendations.

I'd think that would also apply to other aspects of any screen or form(?).
So if you're working on a screen, you'd lay things out so people could jump
to the topic or next step.

If you're working on a form, I recommend Jarrett and Gaffney's "Forms that
Work." Very easy to understand, well laid out book for designing/correcting
form designs. I think aspects of it would be applicable to multiple pages
designed for setting up systems, etc., too.

Kathleen

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Deborah Hemstreet <
dvora -at- tech-challenged -dot- com> wrote:

> LOL - It's only Tuesday but sure feels like Friday...
>
> Seems that The Creative Director (TCD) works for a company that has
> received awards in usability.
>
> TCD advises that there is "some controversy" about the use of red.
> However, in light of the consistent use of red throughout the GUI, and
> that this is clearly part of the company's branding, the use of the red
> buttons is not disturbing, but contributes to the general color scheme.
>
> I talked with the relative of TCD and told  them that, not-withstanding,
> I still have some concerns.
>
> They advised me, "well, our user-base is only about 100 people, it does
> not seem that this is an issue that poses clear-cut problems. The user
> base is familiar with the company, branding, etc. and this should not be
> a problem. But, if we find time, I'll see if we can try getting the
> button changed to blue, or another color in our branding. Please keep
> bugging me about this... we just have so many other concerns...We have
> not paid attention to usability in the past, and we really are trying to
> improve usability, so please, keep bugging me on these issues. Don't
> give up."
>
> Conclusion: We may disagree, but they are starting to soften up and
> recognize that the usability info I am offering is valuable. They have
> agreed to pay particular attention to how their users respond to this,
> and will change the buttons if they become a usability issue (via
> support calls/complaints).
>
> Major success: All text is being passed through me to make consistent
> for capitalization, expression, terminology, and embedded help in the
> GUI is also going to be passed through me!
>
> And that leads to my next question:
>
> Are there any usability studies about how users prefer to see data
> displayed on screens? Specifically, if a user has a choice of seeing
> several headings collapsed, all of which can be expanded to enter the
> desired data, as opposed to all headings on a screen open, but
> necessitating a lot of scrolling down... which would the user prefer?
>
> Thanks again for your input and encouragement!
>
> Deborah
> http://www.tech-challenged.com
>
>
-- 
Kathleen MacDowell
www.writefortheuser.com
kathleen -at- writefortheuser -dot- com
kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat