Clay Barnes talks about HCI, the user experience, and whatever he’s in the mood for.
{ Monthly Archives }
Since I said the mouse needed to be seriously re-examined as the primary device for interacting with the user-interface (see my previous entry), it’s only fair that I give an example of a better way to do it. In this entry I explore one possible way to minimally change the interface to almost remove the mouse entirely, without increasing the difficulty of learning how to use software.
Now, I am by no means hoping to abolish the mouse. Its price to performance ratio is unmatched, and the best alternative pointing device (the tablet) can’t be found for much less than an order of magnitude greater expense: hard to justify for the relatively small performance edge it offers. What I do wish to decry is the enormous reliance on the mouse to cover every possible user interface situation, failing to take advantage of other, better designs. Years of lazy design and low opinions of the user’s desire (even ability) to learn have left us with a constant testing of Fitts’ Law for such trivial tasks as saving, broken paradigms (what about a real-world button relates to replacing an old document irrevocably with the current one?), and a user experience that is more patronizing than productive.
Celebrating the release of Openbox 3.4, I’ve published my mouseless window management design. Of course, if you use firefox, OO.o, or the like, you’ll have to reach for the rat–that’s not my fault, though. :-D
(For those of you reading backward in time from my more recent entries calling for a more keyboard-centric user-interface, this is only one of numerous possible ways to manage window size/placement without a mouse, and not a particularly good one. It’s just what I’ve been using for a while and have gotten used to. Most problematically, it requires significant training to use.)
While Fitts’ Law has been studied extensively with mice, I recently came across an interesting whitepaper comparing mice, trackballs, and (my weapon of choice) tablets.