Thursday 29 October 2009

Implicit by design rather than descriptive text

Hawkins-pressure-cooker-6-5-li

Watching for small things these days has greatly improved my ability to see the obvious, believe me its brilliant feeling when you see art in action everywhere (most places anyways).??

How much of descriptive text can be removed from your programs, manuals.. by simply being implicit in your design and making the choice for your user (or implied choice in case of radio buttons / check boxes).??

In conversation with a??colleague??of mine. Talking about being descriptive in text to inform the user of something. I remembered the notion of providing a handle in early Macs to show the user that after he opens up his cardboard box how to pull the Mac out of the box.

Here is the example I have given to him in layman terms.. If you are having a pressure cooker how do you know which part of pressure cooker you can touch when hot?