Re: Fw: March 2 F2F Minutes (checkpoint discussion)----Original Message-----

At 1:00 PM +0200 3/6/01, Lisa Seeman wrote:
>--Hi, I have started looking through the minutes, and I would like to
>explain the intent of 2.2.
>>
>People have complain/ commented to me that they have trouble reading and
>concentrating on a site were there are animations and distractions. Theses
>comments are of course form people with ADD/ADHD. The problem
>is>concentrating or following and not interaction.
>  The wording has been carefully chosen - "minimize" and not "do not use" so
>that you can have alert boxes or other necessary distractions.

But the wording is not precise enough -- "minimize" means nothing as
a term.  There is no metric -- "minimize" is at best a relative term,
and at worst a verb which means "continually reduce" i.e. to nothing.

The gist of the face-to-face discussion was that instead of saying
"minimize" -- which is unmeasurable and not easy to understand what is
required -- we'd rather turn the checkpoint on its head and make it a
positive.  Say "use animation for <x> and <y>", defining when it's
appropriate, rather than saying either "use it when you like but feel
guilty" or "never use it", which are the only two logical interpretations
of "minimize."

>However imagine an ADHD high school student trying to research a complex
>topic when there are ants crawling across the screen. Every time the ants
>come in his field of vision, he will forget what he is doing and have to
>start again. The designer may think that this will help make the site appeal
>to teenagers. But in reality many students will have to take medication
>before using it. An extreme example, but many animations have a similar
>effect.

How do you "minimize" the above?  Is it by "reducing the number of
ants"?  Is one crawling ant acceptable -- because the effect has been
"minimized" -- but 2 or more crawling ants are not?  Clearly in the
example above you want to say "do not use"!  Thus clearer language
is necessary.

The intent is to say:

      Use animation when it is necessary to disrupt the end user's
      ability perform her tasks.  Don't use animation unless you
      specifically want to do this.

Do you agree with the above sentiment?  The wording is not the final
form of the proposal, of course.

--Kynn


-- 
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
http://www.kynn.com/

Received on Tuesday, 6 March 2001 06:24:51 UTC