activity configuration UI
Aaron J. Seigo
aseigo at kde.org
Wed Mar 28 11:17:20 UTC 2012
hi everyone.
please take a look at the attached screenshot of the activity configuration.
(ignore the rendering issue with the selected wallpaper.) on smaller
resolution screens this is what it looks like; with icon settings tweaked for
lower resolutions we get two rows of wallpapers and things look a bit better
but i think it is clear that there is room for improvement.
a quick anatomy of that window, moving vertically:
* a titlebar
* a text edit
* content
* a toggle button
* control buttons
it would be nice to limit the number of vertical pixels used so that content
space is maximized. it would also be nice to eliminate redundant and obvious
text. as such, here is a set of proposals which i will implement if there are
no objections:
* change title to "Activity Settings" ("settings" being less "tech" than
"configuration" and shorter, at least in english; use title capitalization)
* change "Activity name:" to just "Name:". that it is an Activity is implied,
and is redundant with the title directly above it. the name also appears right
next to the buttons on the activity view so there is an evident corelation
* move "Lock as private" next to the Name entry. this eliminates an entire row
from the vertical space usage and puts all of the controls in one place
* change "Lock as private" to just "Private". the phrase "Lock as private" is
a bit awkward (it is not a natural phrasing one would use in conversation) and
specifying "Lock" speaks to the mechanism rather than the intention of the
user. the intention is "this is private"; the mechanism we use is "locking
it".
one further thing i'd like to experiment with is moving the save/close buttons
into the title bar. some other mobile OSes do this and it would accomplish two
things: better use of screen real estate, make it more obvious to people where
these buttons are. people often do not find the buttons at the bottom; i've
watched dozens of people go through the UI and this is a recurring issue.
on thing that would make this harder is that currently when marking an
activity as "private" the label on the Save button changes to a very long
text. i also question if this is really needed or not: mark it as private and
when "save" is pressed take the necessary steps for a private activity.
p.s. i don't have locking activities working here atm, so i can't see if there
is any UI for changing the password, or if the password is asked for every
time a private activity is saved ... in any case, i'm more concerned at the
moment about the default UI.
--
Aaron J. Seigo
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