GNOME Human Interface Guidelines Released

Seth Nickell writes: "We are proud to announce the release of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines v1.0, the product of usability engineers, designers, hackers, and whatever-keeps-you-writing-calum irish wine[TM]. I hope they'll be useful for improving the usefulness of all free software, not just GNOME apps. Check out the release announcement for details and a plaintive plea for interface coordination between free software projects." (Also at the top of the new Gnome news site called Footnotes.)

Comments

Re:Bad Buttons

[foobar104]

Actually, the reference standard for user interface guidelines-- the Apple User Interface Guidelines from Inside Macintosh-- recommend the opposite. Note and stop alert boxes should have only one button: OK. Caution alert boxes should have two buttons: OK (the default, usually) and Cancel. They go on to say this:

Dialog boxes and alert boxes communicate to the user. It is your responsibility to make sure that the user can understand what is going on when you can't be there to explain. Dialog box and alert box messages should be descriptive rather than evaluative. When you're writing messages, try to put yourself in the place of your users and imagine how they will feel when confronted with your message.

A good alert box message says what went wrong, why it went wrong, and what the user can do about it. Try to express everything in the user's vocabulary. Figure 11-3 shows an example of an alert box message that provides little information and doesn't suggest to the user what is really going on.

(Figure 11-3: A poorly written alert box message)

! Error writing file to disk. [OK]

You could improve this message by describing the problem in the user's vocabulary, as shown in Figure 11-4.

(Figure 11-4: An improved alert box message)

! "Monica Stories" could not be saved because the disk "Blackmail stuff" is full. [OK]

To really make this alert box useful to the user, you need to provide some suggestion about what the user can do to get out of the current situation. Figure 11-5 shows the optimal alert box message for this condition.

(Figure 11-5: A well-written alert box message)

! "Monica Stories" could not be saved, because the disk "Blackmail stuff" is full. Try saving onto a different disk. [OK]

In my opinion, the important work on human interfaces has already been done. We just need to go back and read it. I keep a copy of this book on my shelf all the time, and I read it often. It's almost like a Bible for me. I'll even read it sometimes just for inspiration or encouragement when times are tough.

Okay, I'm sick.