Usability suggestion

[Ian Monroe]

On 10/22/07, Kevin L. McDonald <kevin at definitioncomputers.com> wrote:
> 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!

For every user that would benefit from a "are you sure" there would
probably be a few who were annoyed by having a "are you sure" for an
undoable operation.

Perhaps in the cleared playlist, there could be a note that undo is
possible. "Your playlist is cleared; press _undo_ to restore it."

Not enough people know about undo in general (even folks used to the
concept, since its not common for media players) we should try to
educate folks about it where we can.

Ian