/dev/usability 18 Apr 2007 08:16 pm
My First Rule of Usability
Do not force the user to make two choices at the same time. Give the user a choice that they will know the answer to, and then give them another choice.
For instance:
QUESTION 1: How many players?
[1,2,3,4]
QUESTION 2: Would player [1,2,3,4] like to load a save file?
[No,Yes]
QUESTION 3: What team would player [1,2,3,4] like to play with?
[Red Team, Blue Team]
Is much better than:
QUESTION: How many players? Would player [1,2,3,4] like to load a save file? What team would player [1,2,3,4] like to play with?
[1,2,3,4] * [No,Yes] * [Red Team, Blue Team]
Do you have any idea how long it takes me to use a new DVD player remote, most of which have 50 or so buttons?
on 18 Apr 2007 at 8:27 pm 1.Colin C. said …
You always want to pick how many players and what teams. But loading would come up less often (especially if the load happened when you started up, like on an 360). I would take loading out of the question path entirely.
on 18 Apr 2007 at 8:59 pm 2.bburbank said …
Well, as long as we both agree that all 3 questions at once are a bad idea.
on 19 Apr 2007 at 11:03 am 3.Juls said …
This example is restricted to consoles, right? For instance, a PC game could probably get away with having multiple options on one screen.
And as for the DVD remote.I blame that on bad design. The amount of buttons should be irrelevant, as long as the ones you really need (power/play/menu/arrows) are big and easily to find. I think I’d rather have tons of buttons rather than go through three levels of touch screens just to switch from DVD to Aux.
on 19 Apr 2007 at 2:13 pm 4.bburbank said …
Yeah, it really is a design call, but the bigger thing is that most DVD player manufacturers seem to not give a crap about usability (i.e., they don’t make big, bright buttons).
You’ll also note: I said “do not force the user”, essentially, there should be a single question the user can answer to advance at all times, and other functionality can be there but it’s really for “advanced users,” i.e. users that have memorized the easy questions and want to answer the other questions with shortcuts.