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WebWord Weblog Posting

Posting Date: May 12, 2003
 

Usability Tip: Setting Expectations (Signal vs. Noise) -- "One of the things I don’t hear enough about from many usability professionals/pundits is the importance of specific interface elements setting expectations."

 

  

Reader Comments...
 

Very true. One of my favorite Windows conventions is the ellipsis after a command that tells you a dialog box will come up. Print... is a prime example where I hate to waste paper (or maybe it's that I hate to be clueless as to what will happen), so I never want to trust a Print command without one. That's a good point that Amazon is pretty good at leading the way on the web. I'm reminded of a heading from Steven Krug's book "If you love Amazon so much, why don't you marry it?"

Posted by: Ralph on May 14, 2003 12:39 PM


 

Understanding user expectations about what they think lies behind a piece of functionality can sometimes reveal the best parts of the application the product developers may never have thought of.

Or how a term may be completely misleading in the first place.

Posted by: daniel szuc on May 18, 2003 07:42 AM


 

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