update on active screen locker

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On Thursday 16 February 2012 12:47:21 Marco Martin wrote:
> On Wednesday 15 February 2012, Ivan Cukic wrote:
> > > - After the timer reaches zero, the slider goes back to the start and
> > > the text reads "Sleeping in 5 seconds" again. Instead, it should not go
> > 
> > There are a couple of things that were not obvious to me in the UI:
> > - Tap the slider to cancel the sleep (it is a panic - press to try to stop
> > moving it type of thing :) )
> 
> yep, that is one of the things that indeed do need training to get used to
> (even if just seeing it in action once) situations not avoidable 100% i
> think

This may indeed be one of those "Have to see it once" kinds of things. 
However, testing it with another n=1 usability test revealed that the 
participant tried to push the slider back to its starting position to prevent 
sleep, which is correct-
However, I described a scenario where she'd want to lock the screen but not 
have the device sleep and asked her "What would you do to keep it from 
sleeping?". So it might still not occur to users that a method for sleep 
prevention exists at all. I don't think that's a big problem, though. Those 
people who want to lock without sleep are likely to find out how to do that 
eventually, even if by trial and error.

> > - The sliders don't match the unlock visually. IMHO, it should look
> > similar.
> 
> +1, i think they should look like the unlock button, with a similar
> mechanics, maybe the sleep button "travels" towards the center of the
> screen or something like that (then a tap on either the button or any point
> of the path undoes the sleep)

+1 for more visual consistency.
I'm not sure about the mechanics, though. Unlocking should be as easy as 
possible, because it's only supposed to prevent unlocking the device by e.g. 
touching it when putting it into the pocket. As soon as the user actively 
interacts with the touchscreen, though, it should just take a swipe to unlock 
it.
Shutdown, however, is different. This should only activate when the user 
really wants it to, so I'd prefer a more narrowly defined interaction for that 
(e.g. moving something along one distinct axis, as it is now).
Sleep is somewhere in between, since it has less negative consequences than 
accidentally shutting down, but I'd see it closer to shutdown than unlock.

I agree that we need something that integrates better visually as well as 
being easier to interact with (the tap targets on the sliders are rather 
small), but just dragging something towards the center might be "too easy" for 
shutdown.