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Eric Schaffer,
Ph.D., CPE, is CEO and Founder of Human Factors International, Inc.
He has been involved in creating and teaching software design for
more than 14 years. He can be reached by email at
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John Sorflaten,
Ph.D., CPE, started out writing and directing training films and
documentaries then switched to UI design. "A screen is a screen,"
he says. He works at Human Factors International, Inc. and can be
reached by email at
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Among the incredible range of neuropsychological debilities, few are
more puzzling than "prosopagnosia." This strange malady removes
the ability to "recognize" a familiar face! Yes, the victim
still sees quite well. However, no dawn of recognition occurs when seeing
the face of one's spouse, child, or friend. The victim must examine the
clothing and remember the voice to identify loved ones standing before
them. The victim sees, but doesn't understand. We call this "living
with cryptovision." No cure exists.
In screen design, your users may also experience "cryptovision."
They see the screen, but fail to recognize any meaningful task. Luckily,
this illness seems to appear only on certain screens, typically those
that other people designed. Never your screens!
This symptom reflects the wily style of the eternal foe, cryptodesign.
It strikes when we least expect. Let's investigate the clinical prescription
for combating this insidious neuro-crypto-agent, another enemy in our
war against GUI's from hell. Recall, cryptodesign manifests itself when
a design that solves one problem gets misapplied to other, quite different
circumstances.
HOW TO READ A RECTANGLE Different rectangles demand
different viewing techniques. Imagine you're at the Louvre and the rectangle
on the wall contains a smiling female head-and-shoulders pose backed by
mysterious, cragged and hazed rock formations. Notice how your gaze begins
at a graphically "dominant" shape or color. Then it follows
a path almost "prescribed" by the artist. Your eye traverses
the mouth, the brow, the eyes, then back to the mouth again. Over and
over. We're charmed, enchanted, and transported by the ineffable smile
of La Giaconda.
On the other hand, if this rectangle had textual commentary covering
some 30% of the area, where would your eye begin? Would you begin in the
middle, where you suspect an important or a bolded and italicized word
resides? No. Most of us would exercise our convention of "reading"
the text and thus begin at the leftmost side of the topmost line. (Readers
of Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, and Japanese text would follow their own directional
conventions in their native language.) In conclusion, we use a different
strategy to understand rectangles containing words compare to rectangles
containing just pictures. Most screens display text. Therefore, we should
expect users to "read" those text-oriented screens like we read
a book.
The crypto-wounded designer has forgotten this convention and expects
users to invent a task flow on the fly. The crypto-designer failed to
build clear task flow into the screen design. See Figure 1 for an example.
In defeating insidious cryptovision, the soul-designer quietly enlists
our habit of reading. The soul designer creates
meaning in the screen layout by enlisting our conventional reading
pattern. See Figure 2.
Now let's see other methods by which cryptovision agents infiltrate screen
designs and how you can mount a soul filled counterattack.
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