Status Bar noticeability
Panopticon Central has some interesting points on what people notice in a UI. Specifically, the status bar:
But what this really makes me think of is a usability test they did on Access one day to see how effective text placed in the status bar was. The test went like this: the user was given some task to do in Access. Unbeknownst to them, we'd stuck a message in the status bar that read "If you notice this message and tell the usability lead, we will give you $15." Want to guess how many people got the $15? Zero. After that, we were careful not to put any important information down in the status bar, because it was 100% likely that no one would ever see it.
Combine that with the research showing that people often just hit return to any dialog box, and you have a real issue. I guess any user notification that's important just has to be part of the core UI.
Comments
Raskin's status bar solution
[Socinian] April 27, 2004 15:01:38.685
Jef Raskin has a solution for both of these problems in his book: "The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems" 1. Shade the whole screen, put the message up unshaded, but DON'T make it modal. Let them keep working and hit some "clear message" control-key at their convenience. 2. Make logs meaningful and easy to find. Let the user address issues in their log at their convenience.