[Bf-funboard] Re: (Guillermo) Toolbox speed

[Thorsten Wilms]

GSR / FR wrote:

> It seems to be the method used when talking about something being
> fast. Get some people or even yourself, and ask them to select things
> from menus, with some randomness, measuring time required and
> errors. Fit's Law is about this too, as the recommendation about
> avoiding deep subnesting of levels in menus, or the one about grouping
> of things with separators.

I realy don't know, if I will go that far, but with my Flash Simulation 
for comparing two or more variations I would do it this way:
- Present a random menu item which is to be selected. But to have a 
realy good foundation for evaluation, one would have to make sure the 
menu items will be weighted by importance / frequency of use. So one 
would better have statistical data first.
- Measuring the time starting with the spacebar (or LMB/RMB hold in 
adaption to the 2.3 preview Toolbox).
- Log selection time (time keeps running after wrong selections)
- present the same menu item and switch to the other variation and repeat.

Wouldn't make sense to use my own results, so people would need to send 
in their times by email. I somehow doubt that enough people would do that.

I wonder if there is a easier way to compare different Toolbox designs.

How about selecting a small number of menu items and calculating 
selection times for these for every design?

But in the end I guess it's going to be presenting different designs to 
the community and use what is liked best as the default. If differences 
in efficiency are large enough, this should leave us with the best, 
oherwise it might leave us with the one that only feels fastest.

> ...
> I talked about this in some other mail already, covering a list of
> issues, did you missed it?

You mean your "Review of UI" post? No, and I think you're right with all 
the problems you mentioned. With my design the mousecursor has to be 
relocated by the app if the menu wouldn't otherwise fit on the screen. 
But I think that is less of a problem than submenus altering direction 
all the time.


Thanks!


---
Thorsten