Re: [Ayatana] Dynamic menu items

[Carl Simpson <cwd.simpson@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Just because you don't think its a problem and its
fine the way it is"

That's not what he means. :)

He means that you should start a design by clearly identifying what you are improving- a so-called "problem statement".

Problem statements might be things like:
"Bob frequently uses the save, print and open items in the menu, but he is often frustrated trying to find them among all the other options."
"Jenny receives and sends a lot of email, and struggles to remember how her new emails relate to her previous correspondence."

Identifying the thing your tackling makes sure that you aren't just making "improvements" that no-one wants or needs.  It can also shed light on alternative answers- another idea for solving Bob's problem might be to declutter the menus of whatever application he's struggling with, to organise them in a clearer way, or to expose commonly used options elsewhere in the UI.

2011/4/16 Shane Fagan <shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx>

Hey Kevin,

I get what you mean but some of the problems you are saying are more
about implementation than about the concept. Maybe my idea could be
done as a leftmost or rightmost option on the menu bar that says
frequent (and maybe recent) so the other menus dont move around per
say but the most common stuff floats to the top.

The second thing id like to note is the changing daily bit, that is a
coding issue not a concept issue. The logic in the code probably could
have been improved to remove that.

And lastly that last paragraph I don't really agree with. This list is
about concepts to improve the usability and design of the Ubuntu
project as a whole. Just because you don't think its a problem and its
fine the way it is doesn't mean you shouldn't think about it and try
to improve upon it.

--fagan

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 7:06 PM, Kein Godby <godbyk@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello, Shane.
>
> On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 12:15 PM, Shane Fagan
> <shanepatrickfagan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> We can do it and also learn from microsoft's mistake. Im not saying it
>> wouldnt be a challenge to make it work but I think we should be
>> looking to do things like this to make the interface more intelligent.
>> Menus haven't changed for a long time we should change that.
>
> I'm all for making user interfaces more intelligent. However, we
> shouldn't change pull-down menus merely for the sake of changing
> pull-down menus.
>
> What are the problems with the existing pull-down menu design?  What
> are some potential solutions to those problems?  How can we test those
> solutions to see if they are improvements over the original design?
>
> Here's an example:
>
> Problem: Users must wade through menu items that they rarely use to
> get to the menu items they use more frequently (such as Save and
> Print).
>
> Proposed solution: Rearrange the menu items so that the
> most-frequently used menu items at the top of the menu.  Further, we
> could hide rarely used menu items and reveal them if the user requests
> it or dwells on the menu for some period of time.
>
> Testing the design: Microsoft implemented this design in Office 2000
> to much fanfare.  The problem with the design is that the order of the
> menu items changed from day to day, so the desired menu item wasn't
> where it was before, and was therefore *more difficult* to find.
> Further, the hidden menu items made it much more difficult for people
> to discover the (less-frequently used) features they were seeking and
> greatly reduced the discoverability of those features.
>
> At this point, you could iterate the design to address the problems
> found by testing or, if the problems were inherent in the design, go
> back to the drawing board and come up with a new design.
>
> But you should always start with a clear problem statement—otherwise
> you have no way of knowing whether your 'solution' is an improvement.
>
> --Kevin
>

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