Who decides on which buttons should be big?

I read recently that the current trend in user interface design is to make important buttons big; this makes them easier to find and easier to click with the mouse cursor (more landing area). In contrast, dangerous ones are made harder find and to click.

Sounds reasonable, and we see the effect of this new design philosophy embedded in the much-disparaged ribbon invented by Microsoft. "Much disparaged." Now why would that be?

It does not take long to figure out the flaw fundamental to this philosophy. Who gets to decide which buttons are important? Not the Microsoft Office user, who is not permitted to monkey around with the ribbon -- making it near useless. 

Let's take the ribbon in AutoCAD 2011, for example. Of AutoCAD's 14 Clipboard-related commands, I use two: CopyClip (copy graphics to the Clipboard) and CopyHist (copy text from the command line to the Clipboard). No points for guessing which command Autodesk programmers think is the most important.



By making the Paste button bigger, Autodesk makes the important button smaller -- and harder to read on today's extreme-resolution monitors (which have the unfortunate side effect of miniaturizing user interface elements). In contrast, toolbars have a sensible Large Buttons option for the over-50 crowd, like me; ribbons do not.

I recognize that Autodesk feels it needs to slavishly follow Microsoft's bad example, but just because Paste is the command most-used by Word users doesn't mean it is common among CAD users. I like to think we are more original.

At least Autodesk allows us to modify the ribbon, and -- even better -- lets us take back the time-tested and user-validated menus and toolbars; Microsoft takes the Apple approach and considers us too stupid to mess with their paragon [an ideal instance; a perfect embodiment of a concept] of a user interface (other than on the Quick Access toolbar).

PS: What does format painter (MatchProp) have to do with the Clipboard? 

Comments

[Jeff Waters]

Each user will have different styles of working. Probably impossible to please all the people all the time...

... unless you build in a click counter for each button. Then, the software learns what the individual user likes to use and starts to increase the size of most used buttons.. ??

[Norm C.]

It's the same with Solid Edge ST: Paste button is bigger. Now that puzzles me: before pasting, don't you need to *copy* first?

Over on the Eng-tips Solid Edge forums, news are that SE developers are finally listening to customers: the ribbon will be fully customizable with ST3. Too bad it took 3 releases and 3 years to get back functionality users already had prior to ST.

[Anas Hashmi]

Yeah you would need to copy first before clicking. And isn't copying more friendly and pasting more dangerous?

Having followed the Ribbon interface design very closely jensen's blog, I know why they made the paste button so big. Normally, people copy using ctrl-c. pasting is done by ctrl-v.

Statistically, people don't use copy/paste button much. But when they do use it is for specialized pasting. The number of votes on each button decide how big the button should be. mIcrosoft collects this in their interface.

[Kevin E]

If you put Office 2003 side by side with Office 2007 there is no possible way that you could say that 2003 has the better menus. You have many years of experience using the traditional Office menus and that is where your comfort zone is. Think of it from the perspective of someone that has never used any version of Office before. Which version do you think they would find easier to use?

I believe that some buttons are bigger based on user submitted data that is submitted to these companies when you opt in to help make the product better. I am not 100% sure on that though.

[Robin Capper]

From memory Jensen (Office UI team) mentioned in the video (see post linked to this comment) that research showed pasting was far more common from the toolbar. At one point in the video presentation (linked to his post) he shows a spreadsheet with comparisons of input methods for various commands and mentioned the Ctrl+c shortcut as more commonly used

[Bill Fane]

...and if AutoCAD users want to see a reallly, fast, intuitive menu system the they should start the Options command, select the Display tab, and turn on the old DOS screen menu. Yes, I'm serious and today's date is 5th April, not the 1st.

The DOS screen menu is FAST to load and to switch "tabs" because it has no pretty icons to slow things down. In addition, it is fully context-sensitive. You no longer need to right-click during a command to get a context menu because it was originally built before 3-button mice. For example, no matter how you start the ARC command the screen menu automatically switches to show all the arc options.

I have fairly brisk desktop and laptop computers, but I still find a noticable lag when switching tabs on the ribbon, especially if I haven't used that tab yet in the current session.

You will also find that the DOS screen menu typically requires about 30% fewer mouse clicks because of the aforementioned context sensitivity and because there is no need to expand out the tabs to find lesser-used commands in a crowded tab category.

Another big advantage is that all commands and options are presented in plain text. There is no need to learn the meanings of hundreds of obtuse icons, as if the program had been written in Chinese. I spend an undue amount of time on the ribbon hovering over each icon in turn waiting for the tooltip to turn on until I find the button I need. This is a particular problem witrh the less-used, unfamiliar commands that have smaller buttons and no text label.

LONG LIVE THE SCREEN MENU!

Try it; you'll like it.

[Paul]

Isn't this due to the "dumbing down" of CAD software? To make it "available" to more people who can operate the machine and satisfy the temporary goals of management?

Grrr again.

[Tony Tanzillo]

"What does format painter (MatchProp) have to do with the Clipboard?"

Had they done it right, it would have something to do with the clipboard (e.g., copy and paste properties).

That's the flaw with MatchProps - it can't be used to match properties across layouts or spaces. It can be used to match layer overrides of viewports, but only if they are on the same layout. What good is that?

[James]

CAD has been dumbed down in my opinion. There are fare more advanced tools out there, but CAD is so wide used it has to be available for the masses.