A shot post on usability. Something that must be said. In user interfaces, every click counts.
That means, whenever I ever clicked on anything, the application must try everything to apply the semantics of this click forever.
The application must exploit and persist every decision a user has made -- until she expresses the contrary.
There should never be the need to run the same sequence of user interface commands again and again.
Practically, if I do spell-checking, the UI could remember my choice and apply the same spell-checking again, when I re-run spell-checking. Or even better: Highlight my choice so that I can press just enter. Or ask me, if this choice should be applied forever.
2 comments:
What exactly lead you to this conclusion?
Do you propose that user interface should always be "learning"?
How could a user interface distinguish repeated actions from non-repeated? This seems to me very difficult to do even for a human.
Computer are able to store things. THerefore the human operator should not have to tell the computer a second time exactly the same thing.
It's not only learning. A simple checkbox next to each button would be enough: "[x] Remember this choice (forever, for today, for 10 times)".
Or maybe adding keystroke recorders everywhere.
There must be more that one can exploit.
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