Comments on: Seeing What your Users See: User Interfaces And Limited Choice http://bobondevelopment.com/2007/02/17/seeing-what-your-users-see-user-interfaces-and-limited-choice/ Musings on the craft and business of software development Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:45:33 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: brian http://bobondevelopment.com/2007/02/17/seeing-what-your-users-see-user-interfaces-and-limited-choice/comment-page-1/#comment-436 brian Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:38:08 +0000 http://bobondevelopment.com/?p=32#comment-436 -For example, usually if a users closes an open document without saving, they meant to save the changes up to that point, so at the very least, the default choice, if you present one at all, should be to save the changes. - That is a bad assumption to make. Imagine if every program you used saved the changes you made to a document by default. No notification or question, just a save. It would be like your car automaticly locking it's doors when you closed a door. It causes more problems then it solves. <em>Bob responds: It depends on the software and in some cases, the context of usage. I think it might be a lousy default for a text editor, for instance, because of the kinds of users who would use a text editor and the kinds of jobs they would typically do with it. Text editors get used by people with a clear mental picture of the files they are manipulating, and who may typically make experimental changes they want to commit to disk deliberately. But for a general purpose word processor? Most of them auto-save by default every few minutes anyway, and there is a reason for that. Most users want to be protected from data loss and expect what they type to be saved. For them it's just an annoyance to ask them about it, and causes far more problems to leave their work unsaved than to save it for them. Users are much more likely to call tech support because of lost work than because they want to revert to a previous version. Reverting to a previous version wouldn't even occur to most of them, aside from the more advanced ones that might use some sort of undo feature within the editor. The audience for this blog is, for the most part, the most computer-literate of users. We're used to control and choice. That can still be configurable for us. But as a default, I think most users want less choice rather than more, even if they can't articulate it that way.</em> -For example, usually if a users closes an open document without saving, they meant to save the changes up to that point, so at the very least, the default choice, if you present one at all, should be to save the changes. -

That is a bad assumption to make. Imagine if every program you used saved the changes you made to a document by default. No notification or question, just a save.

It would be like your car automaticly locking it’s doors when you closed a door. It causes more problems then it solves.

Bob responds: It depends on the software and in some cases, the context of usage. I think it might be a lousy default for a text editor, for instance, because of the kinds of users who would use a text editor and the kinds of jobs they would typically do with it. Text editors get used by people with a clear mental picture of the files they are manipulating, and who may typically make experimental changes they want to commit to disk deliberately.

But for a general purpose word processor? Most of them auto-save by default every few minutes anyway, and there is a reason for that. Most users want to be protected from data loss and expect what they type to be saved. For them it’s just an annoyance to ask them about it, and causes far more problems to leave their work unsaved than to save it for them. Users are much more likely to call tech support because of lost work than because they want to revert to a previous version. Reverting to a previous version wouldn’t even occur to most of them, aside from the more advanced ones that might use some sort of undo feature within the editor.

The audience for this blog is, for the most part, the most computer-literate of users. We’re used to control and choice. That can still be configurable for us. But as a default, I think most users want less choice rather than more, even if they can’t articulate it that way.

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