Usability suggestion

Kevin L. McDonald kevin at definitioncomputers.com
Tue Oct 23 01:49:12 UTC 2007


Hello,

I'm a Kubuntu user who is a big fan of Amarok.  My wife and
mostly-non-Linux user sat at my PC today to launch some music.  She
ended up creating quite a playlist.  Suddenly, I was in the kitchen and
heard her say something unprintable.  When I asked her what had
happened, she had thankfully already resolved her issue (being an adept
Windows and "software in general" user), but I wanted to point out her
mistake to you because I feel it could be an overlooked usability issue.

After spending a long time on her playlist, she had clicked "Play," then
gone to "Playlist" in the menubar and attempted to click "Shuffle."
Well, she slipped to the menu item above shuffle, which is "Clear" and
watched her playlist disappear.  (That's when the unprintable word
manifested.)  She realized her mistake and spotted "Undo" in the menu,
and all was well, but:

1) Had she not been used to seeing "undo," she would have "lost" her
playlist.

2) "Clear" is not exactly a great feature to put right next to
"Shuffle."

I just thought I'd point this out.  Perhaps some separation between the
"Clear" function and other functions might be wise, or an "Are you
sure?" dialog.

Thanks for an awesome product!

--Kevin L. McDonald





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