I am so damn picky about GUIs

[yesthattom]

I should change jobs and go into GUI criticism. Can one make a living at that?

Look at this GUI:



In the "Backup Totals" box, the items in the "Current" column keep changing as the backup proceeds. Can you see what's wrong with that???

Of course not. Only a picky person can.

Because the "File Total" is on the same horizontal line as the "Final" amount, they are difficult to compare (especially since they have no commas). If they transpose the cells of that table watching the backup process would be a lot easier since the digits would line up vertically.

I know that's insane, but this is the kind of thing I think about.

Comments

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

It's a good point. If you didn't already have two careers you were so good at (not to mention the activism), you'd be a natural at usability.

[logisticslad.livejournal.com]

It's a different context, but I think of the same kinds of things when I or my students are constructing tables and figures for publication. It's all about ease of communication of information! I don't think it's insane (but a case could be made for it being anal-retentive :-)

[nooks.livejournal.com]

I look at that with a UI eye and count myself lucky that it's not measuring numbers in the final row in milli-bits.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

I suspect that if you did a study, you would see that a) most users don't want to watch the backup process, and b) those who do mostly rely on the blue progress bars at the top because users never read letters or numbers if they don't have to. I'm surprised there isn't an option to hide the "Backup Totals" box to make your backup window take up less screen real estate.

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

I completely agree!

Bad gui, bad gui

[snowboardjoe.livejournal.com]

Yep, this one sucks. I even find the dueling icons annoying at the bottom there.

My pet peeve with status dialog boxes is the the English. An example is a message that says, "Your files are currently being backed up". Why not say, "Backup in progress". I see stuff like that all the time and just roll my eyes.

The other things I hate is when I install some software or package and it tells you the estimated time to completion either in numbers or progress bar. When it finally gets to zero it has to run another stage of the install, and then another, and then another..., all of them with their own countdown. What's the purpose if they don't give you the total?

Re: Bad gui, bad gui

[ted-badger.livejournal.com]

Yes... Estimated Times are somewhat insulting.

My pet peeve is also "the the English". Oh, the irony!!