5 ms·

Such 'instruction buttons' and other notices/signs sprinkled through the UI can be an indicator of bad design, an insufficient consideration of 'affordances'[1]

Such 'instruction buttons' and other notices/signs sprinkled through the UI can be an indicator of bad design, an insufficient consideration of 'affordances'[1]. Which is to say, a good user interface (and not just software, but anyplace human/device interaction occurs) should probably be as intuitive/discoverable as possible, featuring behaviours which can be inferred/suspected from an element's inherent properties (e.g.: in an aircraft cockpit, make the "flaps" switch resemble a flap), from the user's general experience in other contexts (an on-screen control that looks like a "button" should act like a "button"), or which preclude incorrect actions entirely (on a door which only swings open in one direction, install a flat plate on the "push" side and a pullable handle on the "pull" side, so the incorrect choice becomes impossible, and no signs are even needed). Putting actual instructional labels onto interface elements, whether in software (e.g. using words "Click here to..." in the text of a hyperlink) or in real life with the push/pull signs, is oftentimes a cop-out in lieu of a more thoughtful/obvious design. In computer software interfaces (particularly web apps), I would suggest that a large, prominent, colored circle with a gloss effect and an action written/iconized on it, has the affordance of carrying out that action immediately when clicked (for some value of "immediately") -- i.e. being a button. If substantial UI changes have taken place within an app that already has a customer base, I agree it may be valuable to bring these to the attention of the users. But a highlighted notification box appearing at the top of the app's regular UI screens, which persists until the user reads and dismisses it, is widely used -- rather than sprinkling "push" and "pull" signs around a wrongly-conceived interface[2]. Even the venerable "tool-tip" (aka HTML "title" attribute) seems often overused, becoming a crutch to support a mystery-meat navigation[3] philosophy which requires users to hover and wait to figure out what the hell _anything_ does. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance [2] I'm not suggesting that the MC UI itself is wrongly-conceived or even particularly bad, just continuing with my general point. [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mystery_meat_navigation [n] The examples about cockpit design and push/pull doors come from actual published studies in ergonomics. I do not have the resources available at the moment to cite them further.

ricardobeat 13y ago
The goal of these instructions is to guide the user on how to use Mailchimp, the e-mail system, not the UI. The plane cockpit won't show you by itself how to start the engine, that's in the manual/training.
- jamestnz 13y ago
  That's a fair point. And just to clarify (since you mentioned "instructions"), my references to MC above were referring just to the colored circular non-buttons discussed in the OP, and not to the "A quick primer" and "Need help with your first campaign?" instructions (which I'm assuming are always there, and are unrelated to the non-buttons… I guess it would be nice if users could dismiss these newbie instructions once they've become experienced with the site). But if these large circular non-buttons are to remain a permanent fixture on the MC Dashboard (rather than just a temporary "look, here are our new features" exercise), I still wonder why I'd want it to jiggle the blue pointer as if to say "Oh there's the place you SHOULD have clicked just now", when it could actually just take me to my obviously-desired destination immediately. That destination page would then become active on the navbar, presumably with some kind of visual indication that it is now the active one ("presumably" because I'm just speaking extemporaneously here, I haven't used MC in ages)... so the attentive user will have learned a second way to reach their desired feature (as in, "I clicked the big round button and it took me straight to the place I was expecting, and the 'Lists' item on the navbar has become active"). Then you've provided two different ways to get to the desired feature in a single click (each method reasonable in and of itself), rather than providing one direct method (the navbar), plus an indirect method that attempts to retrain the user to click somewhere else instead.
- pwg 13y ago
  > The plane cockpit won't show you by itself how to start the engine, that's in the manual/training. The plane cockpit is also _not_ intended to be used by first-time users having to discover everything themselves as they go along. It is assumed the new user of the plane cockpit will be given detailed training on how to use the cockpit. UI's, and esp. web UI's, don't tend to come accompanied with _detailed training on how to use_ them. Which is why UI's _need_ discoverability and plane cockpits do not.

ricardobeat 13y ago

The goal of these instructions is to guide the user on how to use Mailchimp, the e-mail system, not the UI. The plane cockpit won't show you by itself how to start the engine, that's in the manual/training.

jamestnz 13y ago
That's a fair point. And just to clarify (since you mentioned "instructions"), my references to MC above were referring just to the colored circular non-buttons discussed in the OP, and not to the "A quick primer" and "Need help with your first campaign?" instructions (which I'm assuming are always there, and are unrelated to the non-buttons… I guess it would be nice if users could dismiss these newbie instructions once they've become experienced with the site). But if these large circular non-buttons are to remain a permanent fixture on the MC Dashboard (rather than just a temporary "look, here are our new features" exercise), I still wonder why I'd want it to jiggle the blue pointer as if to say "Oh there's the place you SHOULD have clicked just now", when it could actually just take me to my obviously-desired destination immediately. That destination page would then become active on the navbar, presumably with some kind of visual indication that it is now the active one ("presumably" because I'm just speaking extemporaneously here, I haven't used MC in ages)... so the attentive user will have learned a second way to reach their desired feature (as in, "I clicked the big round button and it took me straight to the place I was expecting, and the 'Lists' item on the navbar has become active"). Then you've provided two different ways to get to the desired feature in a single click (each method reasonable in and of itself), rather than providing one direct method (the navbar), plus an indirect method that attempts to retrain the user to click somewhere else instead.
pwg 13y ago
> The plane cockpit won't show you by itself how to start the engine, that's in the manual/training. The plane cockpit is also _not_ intended to be used by first-time users having to discover everything themselves as they go along. It is assumed the new user of the plane cockpit will be given detailed training on how to use the cockpit. UI's, and esp. web UI's, don't tend to come accompanied with _detailed training on how to use_ them. Which is why UI's _need_ discoverability and plane cockpits do not.