UI module owner

[Benton, Kevin]

> Gerv wrote:
> > Do any of the people find it this problem ever click the "Give me
some
> > help" link at the top of the page?
> 
> I've never seen or heard of anyone clicking it. But let's pretend I
did.
> 
> Zero, there's no What's This widget by that link, so I'd never click
it.
> First, there's no hint as to which things have help, so I don't know
> what I can hover over, simply using dotted or doubled underlines would
> help (alternatively offering whats this hover anchors would also
> work).

In Vincent Flanders's book "Son Of Web Pages That Suck - Learning Good
Design by Looking at Bad Design", he calls this "Mystery Meat
Navigation."  It's not intuitive and hides capabilities from users.  We
could say the same thing for the shortcut keys on the Advanced Search
page.  How is a user supposed to know they can hit Alt-R to jump to the
resolution field?  When capabilities/features are hidden from users, it
creates a supportability issue.

> The problem here is that we don't give people examples or walk through
> documents for using our features. If you show anyone how to use these
> features it becomes instantly intuitive and they'll remember and use
> it (ask smaug, I showed him over the weekend), but no one will guess.

In the US, we have a saying - "a picture is worth a thousand words."
What I'd like to see in a lot of our help is just what timeless is
talking about - examples with visual reference - screen shots or
reproductions.

> > If they do, did they figure out how the help system worked?
> 
> This is "First" in my list

Many users found out by trial and error (not a good use of time).
Others found out by asking a co-worker that knew (why make a user ask
another how to use a tool - the tool should be able to explain itself).
Others simply don't know.

> > Did they get the info from hovering over the Date boxes?
> 
> > Was it sufficient?
> 
> This is "Second" in my list.

I hate mystery meat navigation.  If we're going to use tool tips, we
need to tell users when a tool tip is available by supplying a ? or some
other consistent glyph that tells users - here's help about this
widget/field/control.  If the user mouses-over, they get a brief help
screen.  If the user clicks on it, they get the same brief help followed
up by at least one example of how to use the widget.

---
Kevin Benton
Perl/Bugzilla Developer/Administrator, Perforce SCM Administrator
AMD - ECSD Software Validation and Tools
 
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