On 10.8.2012 14:26, Jaromír Coufal wrote:

On 10.8.2012 13:34, Justin Clift wrote:
On 10/08/2012, at 5:58 PM, Jaromír Coufal wrote:
... So I would just go to the bottom of the page, hit help, hit
deployable and I am right there, where I need to be.
Heh.  That doesn't seem so easy to me, from a "new user having
difficulties" perspective.

What I mean is the above isn't one step in thinking.  It's:

a) Er... ok, now I'm lost.  <-- user figures they need help
b) User needs to know to scroll to page bottom <-- not automatic
c) User scrolls to bottom of page
d) User hunts around for "that help link" then clicks on it
e) User hunts around for what seems like the right description
   for what they're trying to do.  "deployable?  is that it?"
   Click on a few things, looking for the right one.
   ^^^^^^ Remembering, this user is having issues.  Low
          knowledge level should be assumed here.
f) If the user gets this far, we'll be able to give them the
   info they want.

Compare this to:

a) Er... ok, now I'm lost.  <-- user figures they need help
b) User clicks link in flash message for more info.
   ^^^ The link should take them to exactly the right spot
       not just some index page, they then need to search
       through. ;)

Does that make sense?

+ Justin

--
Aeolus Community Manager
http://www.aeolusproject.org

Yeah, it makes sense, I understand and agree with you, that second approach is much easier in this case.

Just one note to case 1: It's said that users are used to look for website help in footer menu. I was doing some research few months ago and found out that they actually go directly down, if they look for some help/documentation/etc. But I didn't have big group enough to say this for sure. Anyway I will search for some researches about this, just for curiosity :)

But definitely agree with you that, second approach is much easier. I was more wondering how often will this situation occur, that I am so lost, that I need really deep information, because majority of cases should be solved by reading tooltip text - that's why they will be there. We should be able to design application the way, that user shouldn't need go through very deep documentation to use it (even though it might rarely happen). Having link in tooltip might be little bit distracting and might attract user's attention (curiosity what can I find there) although he can complete his goal. Does it make sense to you?

Anyway this is no big issue, so if we agree that user can be so lost, that he needs detailed information (quite often), then it is really ok to place link in tooltip.

Thinking about this little bit more, I am more and more agreeing with you that it might be better to place a link there (target=_blank) - in our case it might more useful for beginners than "non-distraction" approach.

-- Jarda

-- 
Jaromír Coufal

Interaction Designer
Red Hat Czech s.r.o.

Mobile: +420 724 595 508
E-mail: jcoufal@redhat.com
IRC: jcoufal at #cloudforms-ui, #aeolus, #brno