Re: [linux-audio-dev] Knobs / widget design (radial movement)

New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] Knobs / widget design (radial movement)
From: Fons Adriaensen (fons.adriaensen_AT_skynet.be)
Date: Sat Jun 26 2004 - 00:23:06 EEST


On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 03:38:10PM -0400, Lee Revell wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-06-25 at 12:00, Fons Adriaensen wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 06:54:20PM +0200, Thorsten Wilms wrote:
> >
> > > Requiring the user to read documentation to learn about functionality
> > > he would not even expect is not an option.
> >
> > Have education levels gone down *that* far ?
>
> It is not necessarily about education.

See my other reply.

> I think this is a lot of the reason European (especially Dutch) design
> is so much more advanced than American. In the States, a fire exit sign
> says 'EXIT'. In the Netherlands, it is an icon that unmistakably means
> 'this way out', without any text required. This is *much* harder to do
> than just 'EXIT' in big red letters, but required. If there is a fire
> in Amsterdam for example, you will have people from 5-10 different
> countries running for the exit.

Yes, that's true. I remember driving in the US, and how I found it very
odd for all the roadsigns to tell me in plain English what I was or wasn't
supposed to do. But 'graphic' signs can be completely useless as well.
At work I have a telephone with something like 20 extra buttons besides
the numeric keypad. They all have mysterious signs on them that defy both
my imagination and logic reasoning. I'd much prefer for them to be labeled
'Hold', 'Transfer', etc. than by the totally uncomprehensible things there
are now.

> With regards to radial movement, the only self-explanatory way to do it
> that I have seen is mousewheel-on-mouseover. People will figure this
> out with no documentation at all. Please make your radial controls work
> this way unless there is a good reason not to.

If you have a mousewheel :-)

-- 
FA


New Message Reply About this list Date view Thread view Subject view Author view Other groups

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b28 : Sat Jun 26 2004 - 02:24:24 EEST