View Single Post
Quote:
Originally Posted by fairydreams View Post
The coloured ring is a hand waving at the back saying "don't forget or ignore me", their first priority is raising awareness, the second is the specific awareness: important vs late.

.... now I have grown used to it ...
It's an interesting mnemonic, and helpful of you to share it with us.

But does good information design impose the need to devise and learn mnemonics ?

One can always learn and get used to things – with time, Morse code or the Chinese writing system can become second nature, and look completely transparent and meaningful, but the quality of UI design = (what it makes visible ) divided by (the effort it imposes).

If the effort imposed on the user increases (colours have to be distinguished in bright light, mnemonics have to be devised and shared, attention to text gets distracted by unnecessarily large and saturated UI elements etc etc) or if information visibility decreases (flags are conflated with timing), then, quite simply, the quality of UI is lowered.

The little coloured progress dots are excellent. The thick and over-loaded Tokyo metro fruitloops are not. They can, with time, be learned, and mnemonics can be devised and shared. But good UI does that work for the user. Weak UI depends on the user to do the work.

The first thing that hits the eye when you look at an action list should be the actions.

Visually checking the action status should not require mnemonics, impose a period of learning, or become more difficult in strong light.