Wednesday, January 28, 2004
Wrong mental model, and no warnings... a surprise attack from Windows XP
[no link available - if there was one, it would point to a picture of me jumping up and down and shouting]
It's been a while since I discovered a major interface problem in a desktop interface, but the design flaw that caused me to lose a few hours programming work this afternoon certainly counts as major to me. It's interesting because it's an example of how problems with 2 aspects of interface design - mental models and insufficient warning messages - can combine to cause real problems...
I'd been having problems with some code in a particular folder, and one solution I decided to try to was re-creating the project elsewhere, albeit with the same source files. I selected the source files I wanted to keep, and chose 'Cut' from the contextual menu. This was the first problem - my mental model of cut & paste operations tells me that when I choose cut or copy then the thing being cut or copied is actually cut or copied somewhere, ie the clipboard. this is pretty much how it works in word processors etc, isn't it? OK, so with my source files safely placed on the clipboard, I selected the parent folder I was having problems with and clicked 'delete'... imagine my surprise when I tried to paste my source files into a new folder: 'directory cannot be found'. hmm, where have my files gone? surely the interface didn't let me delete a folder that contained files marked as 'cut'? surely, if those files weren't on a clipboard, I should have been told? "yes, surely I should have been", I shouted, or words to that effect, only louder and with more asterisks.
now, I admit that there was a 3rd contributing factor to this loss of data: I don't like the recycle bin, and so when I delete things they really are deleted. but look at the root cause: mismatched mental models and no warnings about what is about to happen because of it. I'd kind of hoped we were past this kind of thing by now, but it looks like there's work to be done yet.
[no link available - if there was one, it would point to a picture of me jumping up and down and shouting]
It's been a while since I discovered a major interface problem in a desktop interface, but the design flaw that caused me to lose a few hours programming work this afternoon certainly counts as major to me. It's interesting because it's an example of how problems with 2 aspects of interface design - mental models and insufficient warning messages - can combine to cause real problems...
I'd been having problems with some code in a particular folder, and one solution I decided to try to was re-creating the project elsewhere, albeit with the same source files. I selected the source files I wanted to keep, and chose 'Cut' from the contextual menu. This was the first problem - my mental model of cut & paste operations tells me that when I choose cut or copy then the thing being cut or copied is actually cut or copied somewhere, ie the clipboard. this is pretty much how it works in word processors etc, isn't it? OK, so with my source files safely placed on the clipboard, I selected the parent folder I was having problems with and clicked 'delete'... imagine my surprise when I tried to paste my source files into a new folder: 'directory cannot be found'. hmm, where have my files gone? surely the interface didn't let me delete a folder that contained files marked as 'cut'? surely, if those files weren't on a clipboard, I should have been told? "yes, surely I should have been", I shouted, or words to that effect, only louder and with more asterisks.
now, I admit that there was a 3rd contributing factor to this loss of data: I don't like the recycle bin, and so when I delete things they really are deleted. but look at the root cause: mismatched mental models and no warnings about what is about to happen because of it. I'd kind of hoped we were past this kind of thing by now, but it looks like there's work to be done yet.
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
Atom
RSS