Re: [Audacity-devel] Good interface design

[Steve t. F. <ste...@gm...>]

On 6 December 2013 14:51, Gale Andrews <ga...@au...> wrote:
>
> | From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...>
> | Tue, 3 Dec 2013 20:25:04 +0000
> | Subject: [Audacity-devel] Good interface design
>> I've been looking through a very large number of non-Audacity effects
>> and I notice that the vast majority of interfaces name the controls
>> with one word. In a few exceptional cases there may be two or three
>> words or symbols.
>>
>> Outside of Audacity  and Goldwave the *maximum* length of a control
>> name that I found was 3 words.
>
> Were you looking mostly at Linux apps?

I was looking primarily at audio effects for Windows, but also for Mac
OS X and a few for Linux.
There is a huge collection of audio effects at kvraudio.com most of
which include screenshots.

Steve

>
>
>> In Audacity we commonly label controls with names that are 3, 4, 5 or
>> even longer names. In one of our more extreme examples Sound Finder
>> has 79 words in the GUI in addition to the effect name with 11 words
>> for the final control.
>
> Sound Finder/Silence Finder will lose their explanation text when
> they get the updates you are working on.
>
> Five words, three or one on a control are a judgement as to our
> user base.
>
> It's easy to find new Audacity users writing to feedback@ for whom
> one word clearly is not enough, and in the next e-mail another new
> user who found everything intuitive, and neither user apparently
> read the Manual.
>
> I'm with Federico in thinking you can take brevity too far in a control
> name. But it will be easier to be more brief everywhere when we
> have Help buttons in dialogues that go to the relevant page in the
> Manual.
>
>
>
> Gale
>
>
>
>> Is there any evidence that a verbose GUI is better for users?
>> Is this good interface design?
>> Do we have any guidelines for the use of text in Audacity effects?
>
>>
>
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