Verbs in User Interfaces
One could argue that the verbs I’ve highlighted here in the Bloglines interface are perfectly clear:
If you click it, then the posts beneath that little header bar will change to “oldest first” order. Right? Maybe I’m just dim, but I find myself having to think that through every day.
Now compare that to a typical slideshow on Flickr:
You could argue that that is redundant. But I don’t think so. It’s not redundant if it takes you from “having to think out the logic in your head” to “state of no doubt whatsoever.”
Would it make sense for Bloglines to have a big redundant header like this:
Oldest first (sort newest first)
Personally, I think it would–that tiny change would make me a much happier user.
We’re going to start with an English interface to Blogamundo. Brazilian Portuguese will be next, because Jonas and I both speak it (He’s Brazilian… I’m just a Brazil nut.)
Beyond that, we’re going to try to enlist the help of our users for localization.
There are tons of technical names for all this in linguistics: tense , aspect, and mood are a few. (I think there’s “perfectivity” as well. I’ll have to look that up.) But these sorts of distinctions are formed differently in different languages — in some languages, perhaps, a single verb would be immediately clear.
That kind of info has to be supplied by native or near-native speakers.
6 comments.
Technorati tags: Language and the Web, ui, verbs
I’d rather avoid those labeled generic buttons.
In Flickr’s slideshow interface a “play” symbol (like ▶) would have been perfect. It’s already there but with a label.
Unfortunately they chose the same symbol for “next” so you must keep the label. For disambiguation they should have used either arrows (like ← and →) for “previous” and “next” or something like “rewind” and “forward” (like ◀◀ and ▶▶).
For Bloglines’ interface I guess a symbol is less obvious. Many interfaces do however use a symbol for this kind of stuff. Each time a field is used to sort a set of data it has an upward or downward triangle (like △ or ▽) next to its title to indicate the order or reverse order (like your email by date in Thunderbird or other email clients). This is not as explicit as text, and can lead to ambiguity (is “△” newest or oldest first?) but it surely is space saving.
I find these symbols being a better visual interface. But the translation issue isn’t solved, since you’d probably need tooltips for those buttons.
I share your dislike for the aesthetics of having labels all over the Flickr interface. And it’s also true that translating such things is an awful lot of work — when it’s possible to replace text with an icon, that change represents a significant save in translation effort.
But, if you compare Flickr’s navigation to that of Google video I still think Flickr’s is clearer. Google has something that seems quite close to what you’re describing:
Here’s a screenshot:
Now, without going and using the interface, are you sure what that ❚❚ button does? Does it mean “pressing me will pause the video” or “the video is now paused”?
Here’s a random video I happened to be watching
just this morning… you can see if your assumption was correct. (And I’d be interested in any other readers’ as well…
It comes down to a question of whether the icon represents a state, or a command.
It’s not really such consequential deal for video interfaces since the user is never more than one click away from correcting a misunderstanding. But with Bloglines I find myself having to scroll around the interface to figure out which way those 20 posts I’m reading are sorted.
Perhaps the best of both worlds would be to offer a “help mode” with labels, and its opposite would be “compact mode” — you could turn the labels off.
Vc disse que fala português. Que bom, pois eu não falo inglês.
Eu queria comentar sobre a tradução do sistema que vcs estão desenvolvendo, e gostaria de sugerir que vcs pensasem em disponibilizar uma interface de tradução onde o próprio usuário (no caso, um que fale mais de um idioma :P ) possa ajudar na tradução do sistema. Digo isso, pois vejo muitas interfaces de sites com serviços interessantes, (como o flickr ou o Youtube) que são em inglês e que são usados por muitos brasileiros, sendo que vários desses usuários ajudariam na tradução desses sistemas.
Eu por exemplo, gostaria muito de traduzir o flickr para que minha irmã possa usar sem me atormentar a todo momento.
até mais,
Uirá
Muito prazer, Uirá, obrigado pelo comentário interessante. Vou traduzi-lo ao inglês para que os outros leitores aqui possam ler também. (E também porque eu não tenho muita confidência na minha abilidade de escrever bem o português, heheh.)
For the benefit of those who don’t read Portuguese, Uirá writes:
Obrigado pelo comentário, Uirá. É um assunto muito interessante, e eu acho que eu vou escrever todo um post aqui no Hacklog sobre esse assunto mesmo.
Thanks for the comment, Uirá. It’s a very interesting topic, and in fact I think I will make it the subject of the next post here at Hacklog.
No enquanto, espero que a sua irmã não te atormentar demais. ;)”
I hope your sister doesn’t drive you crazy too much in the meantime ;)
More discussion of play vs pause buttons: Joel on Software - Play and pause button: separate or bimorphic
At the risk of beating a dead horse, here’s another play/pause/stop interface:
In this case there no indication at all which state the application is in, although it’s clear enough which button does what.