RE: Visual Indicators

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to get to some conclusion from this thread, focusing on what people are suggesting to change (and to paraphrase people horribly):


  *   Gundula would like to widen the scope back to it’s original (all controls provide affordance) but within a process, and avoid overlap from referencing inline links.
  *   Andrew & JohnF are concern with requiring underlines/icons when there are examples (like Google results) which would fail but appear to have a clear expectation of being links (i.e. a false-fail). Design push-back would also be expected. Personalisation seems a better option.
  *   JonA is concerned about defining what is part of a process or not.
  *   The COGA TF (via Rachael) are concerned the current version was missing the intent and proposed a new version:

“Interactive elements do not rely solely on spacing or a single visually identifiable characteristic to differentiate them from static elements, except for the following:

  *   An underline is sufficient to indicate a link is interactive
  *   A color difference is sufficient to indicate an element is disabled
  *   The control is part of a group of controls that has a visual indicator for the group”

My first impression of that update is that “a single visually identifiable characteristic” needs some explanation, I’m not sure how to apply that. Also, if the single characteristic were a border or background, wouldn’t that be ok?

Overall, we seem to be oscillating between what we would like (the original affordances SC) and a very narrow version focusing on some specific aspects.

The affordances version needs a huge amount of research/testing to define what visual aspects are needed to make something appear interactive.

The narrower versions still suffer from creating false-positives and being very prescriptive about particular design aspects. IMHO being prescriptive isn’t necessarily a blocker, but if people can point to false positives then it is undermined.

I’m struggling to see a path forward for this one on 2.2 timescales, we really need that research on what standard/core affordances are for various controls to align the SC/guideline text with the exact issues.

-Alastair