Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem
If you have a Scribe, you will know what I'm talking about: 'What is that annoying thing in the margin up there?' (see attached).
As a former SDET (with some experience with validating UX issues), I took a deeper dive.
TL;DR
They should revert this feature ASAP!!
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It seems they wanted to streamline the process of placing a note, by bypassing the options that come up with Long Press. How to signal user intent to Place a Note at a given location?
Long Press is 'taken', and Tap's job is to monitor the tap zones, and the highlights, Note icons or hyperlinks that might be there.
Hence the Brilliant Idea: a Toolbar!! Something to tap on! The Pen toolbars are awesome and fun! Let's do another one! Toolbars Rule!!
It's not too soon to point out that this is already not any quicker than Long Press and tapping the Note button. It also involves two touch actions on two locations which could be several inches apart, requiring quite a bit of hand-eye coordination compared to the tried and true method we've used all these years, where the two locations are less than an inch apart.
But the badness doesn't stop there.
Look how complicated the toolbar is: it Expands to show 4 Buttons: Minimize, Long Press (?), Place Note, and Menu.
It's not too soon to point out that only one Button is really needed: a toggle Button with Note icon with two states: Not Ready to Place, and Ready To Place.
But we're not done: Menu has only one option, Move To Right. Why not replace with a Move to right side icon? And when it's on the right side a Move to Left side icon. Probably doesn't even need localization.
And why do we need a Long Press button at all? We don't: Long Press always takes precedence. It's just a complicated way to cancel Place Note mode.
What if I want to do a series of Place Notes? There's no efficiency to be gained: it's always at least 2 Taps because Tap Mode doesn't stick (good reasons for that)
With Place Mode in effect you can do arbitrarily number of non-Tap touch gestures. Then maybe you casually tap the right side, expecting to turn the page. Oops! The Note dialog launches. Conversely, you go to tap on a word to place a note and miss by a little bit. Oops! the page turned.
If you prefer to keep the toolbar minimized of course it adds 2 taps every time you would otherwise use Place Note. But it is still distracting, and there's no option to hide it.
I'm confident the issues with Print Replica support will be solved soon (the under the hood devs tend to be better than the more effete UI devs), and it will be awesome indeed!
But with this? Somebody actually thought this feature addressed a usability issue, when the reverse is true. Unless they got fired, they probably have not changed their mind (if you can call it that). What's it gonna take to get this pulled, or at least add some option to hide it.
Enough badness for you? No?
Turns out the redesigned Notes dialog is another textbook UI anti pattern example. But I'll save that for another post. Lunch time!
But to put it all in perspective, I remind you that we are all going to die.
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Erm, you do realise you can hide the toolbar if you so wish?