Interrupting your user

When designing user interfaces a lot of thought needs to go into when you are going to interrupt a user.  I am going to walk you through an example of what not to do.  My example deals with messing around with CSVs in excel.  I recently have been doing a lot of data loading via CSV and found myself getting consistently interupted by Excel when trying to save.  Pretty simple concept, once I have changed a document I should be able to click save ( yup thats it, nothing else.. pretty simple request huh?). 

 

Well take a walk with me…

Step 1.  Right click your desktop->new->Text Document

Step 2.  Change the name to Test.csv

Step 3.  Double Click Test.csv and it will open in Excel.

Now you will have an empty spreadsheet.  I am going to enter(| indicate next cell) : This | Is | A | Bad | UI | Interaction

 

Step 4.  Click Save.

Kaboom.  Greeted with a Sound AND Messagebox:

So I dont understand?  I just entered text why is it complaining about tabs?  Oh well I want to Save my csv format… so i click yes.

Step 5. Click Yes

Step 6.  Close

I then go to close the workbook and am greeted with:

Hmm.. I didn’t change anything so NO!

Step 7. Click No.

So lets open it back up and see what’s going on.

Step 8. Double click Test.csv

Really?  I guess that first warning was justified. Apparently, when I clicked yes to keep the format it meant, collapse into one cell and insert ? character…hmm.

Note: If you are on Windows 7 you might just see ThisIsABadUIInteraction either way it collapsed the text into one cell

Lets get out of here

Step 9.  Close

GAH!  Again!

Step 10.  Click No

So now I am just going to take over, I am going to open up the raw text and fix the CSV myself. 

Step 11.  Edit text and place “,” between each word and remove the TABs.  Save and Close.

Step 12. Open this thing back up(in Excel).

Ah.. much better.

Step 13.  Add a new row

Step 14.  Save (yes)

Here comes that warning again… click yes.

Step 15.  Close

Nooooo not again.  I don’t think I changed anything….

Step 16.  Lets click yes for the fun of it…

Woah…. Save As?  Really?

Well I don’t want to change the name… so I click

Step 17. Click Save

Noooo tooo many decisions…

 

Really?

Step 18.  Click Yes.

We have to be done right…?

Brain explodes… get a friend to click yes…

Step 19.  Click Yes.

 

FINALLY it closes.

 

So just take that for what its worth. There are really only 3 issues that reoccur that makes the process painful.   One if I open up a document and click save:  Save it, pretty simple.  Excel offers a “Save As” option, if i want to specify a different name or change the type I will select “Save As”.  Second, when its time to close prompt me to save changes (if I have actually changed anything) and then accept my answer and close.  In our situation it took 5 clicks to close… ?

 

Another thing I notices was the dialog that says “filename may contain features that are not compatible with ..(CSV or TAB).  What does that mean?  I didn’t do anything more than enter csv stuff.  I didn’t use formulas, charts, etc so what is it complaining about?  The first time I opened a CSV, it was completely empty.   But for some reason it decided it was a TAB delimited format?  Who knows.  Its almost like they are trying to scare you into the “lastest Excel format.”  Oh well, if you take anything away from this entry:

 

Americans are indecisive by nature, so don’t overwhelm  with unnecessary, and very word prompts.  Code to the things that the majority of people will want/need to do, and only interrupt people when it is completely necessary.

StackOverflow.com

StackOverflow.com is a community based Question and Answer site that is free and reliable. When people are having those completely random, inexplicable issues, while developing code and there is no solution in site this site is your savior. Unless you are coding in Cobalt or some other really rare environment you post a question, and within seconds will get some type of feedback. It’s been along for so long why am I blogging about it? Well recently, they finally released an api that allows for you to share your reputation as an image. For years they have allowed this, but it was javascript/iframe based which did not allow for embedding in public forums(most strip out the html markup).

 

Today I am happy to announce to you that this is no longer a limitation.

 

They now have an url friendly way to share your rep!

http://stackoverflow.com/users/flair/USER_ID_HERE.png

So why is this important to share with people?  Well SO is a reputation based site, so as you help other people you gain reputation.  Here is how the reputation works:

    answer is voted up:  +10

    question is voted up:  +5

    answer is accepted: +15 (+2 to acceptor)

    post is voted down: -2 (-1 to voter)

 

Reputation is not easy to come by, there are a lot of bored developers out there trolling the site just waiting for a question they can answer,and the community is not shy about down voting bad answers.  As a result the reputation you earned is well respected among software developers.

 

 

I recommend you getting involved in the site on both sides.  If you are having issues, ask questions.  If you are looking for some feedback on a design idea?  ask the question.  If you are doing something you aren’t quite sure is industry standard?  ask the question.

 

And when you don’t have any questions to answer, spend a couple minutes a day helping out others.  I guarantee the process of helping outers will increase the breadth and depth of your knowledge.

 

 

The creators of SO recently have expanded their sites to other areas most can be seen here ( http://stackexchange.com/) these sites range Administration (server issues),  Programming,  Food, Music, Gamming, so if software isn’t your thing.. maybe one of the other sites might make for a good hobby…