(Floe) User interface options, Infusion 1.4, draft 1 SME feedback (February 25, 2011)

On bucket labels ("easier to see/find/use/etc." vs. "text & display", etc.)

- We made a change in the bucket labels (e.g., from "Easier to find" to "Layout & navigation") on the basis that it reduces interpretation burden for the user (e.g., "What does 'Easier to find' mean?")
- For some people this will help, for others the flip in terminology may have the opposite effect (i.e., make it more difficult to understand)
- See "vocabulary problem" in HCI literature
- "The right phrase" is elusive, and often impossible to find; there's too much variability in people's perspectives and understanding
- Yellow Pages conducted a study on finding the right headings that would work for everyone, but found that different individuals expected to find the same item in different categories (e.g., shoes were expected either under "Shoes" or "Apparel")
- Possible solution: use rich indexing. i.e., provide multiple paths/redundancies to the same destination (e.g., in our case, provide multiple descriptions)
- Rich indexing may run the risk of over-design or increased complexity

On text styles

- Label consideration: is it "Text style" or "Font"?
- Consider using meta-configurations: can we embed/use fonts that are already on the user's system? (may be technically possible for the server to know what fonts the client has installed)
- In Mozilla or Webkit, it's possible to detect what plugins are loaded into the browser

On input sizes

- Does changing input size automatically affect the text size for the respective element? It should.
- What happens when both the input and text sizes are adjusted? The text size should be bigger than if only one or the other was increased.
- Would there be any use cases for bigger text but not bigger inputs? Adjusting text sizes should adjust inputs with text accordingly too.
- Sizing is adjusted either for vision (text and inputs) or motor (inputs) issues

On obfuscation

- On the "skinny panel" configuration, control panels may obscure some content
- Potential solutions: movable panel (but be wary of the complexity this introduces), or introduction of whitespace above/below the original content (but be wary of consistency with exist design, especially the background)

On UI option'd UI options

- The problem: how do you simplify the layout of UI options? (i.e., convert to single column)
- First reaction: don't bother with it; not a critical issue?

Future directions

- Self-voicing content
- Content prioritization
(- In addition to our planned directions: animation, media captioning (profile configuration might be full page, local configuration might be contextual), content structure manipulations)