Helpful hint

[Melissa Hunter-Kilmer <mhunterk -at- BNA -dot- COM>]

On Tue, 13 Feb 1996, "Colleen Dancer (02) 333-1862"
<DANCER -dot- COLLEEN -at- A2 -dot- ABC -dot- NET -dot- AU> wrote:

> We have recently been doing gui design for a project, and
> the developers have been having a hard time with my
> insistence that nearly everything that can be done with a
> mouse should also be able to be done with a keyboard.
> <snip> I then suggested that we needed to accommodate
> people with RSI or wrist problems and and they accepted
> that.  <snip> So sometimes if you can't convince them one
> way, try another.

We went through the same thing on colors used in an app.
The developers were going hogwild using all the color
combinations they possibly could -- chartreuse on lavender
and other tasteful choices.  I tried to convince them to
standardize by saying that all similar screens/fields needed
to have a color cue to show the users "Look, it's this kind
of screen/field."  That didn't work.

Then I said that some users were colorblind, figured out
roughly how many people that would mean for this product's
users, and got an actual colorblind user to sit with me and
tell me what he could and could not see.  It helped that the
user was the company vice president and heir apparent, too!

Abracadabra -- color standards!  And I gained the epithet of
Color Queen.  Oh, well . . .

Melissa Regina (Hunter-Kilmer)
mhunterk -at- bna -dot- com
(standard disclaimer)