[inforoots] Bold and not bold

[Peter Capek]

I'll make an attempt at answering your question.

The example you give, I believe, is a facility which existed earlier in
AOL's mail system, and undoubtedly others before that.

There are people who are, by profession, user interface designers.   They
think about how the user (and that's quite a broad and diverse space in most
cases) could best interact with the software.  What would the recipient of
mail want to see?   In what order?   Are senders' names, senders'
e-mailaddresses, subject lines, date and time of receipt, date and time at
which the mail was sent, or the first line of the body text most valuable?
The answer to these questions will be variable depending on the intent and
situation of the user.  Some mail systems attempt to sort incoming mail by
importance -- mail from my boss or from my peers is more important (or more
urgent...) than mail from my Aunt Tilly.   Beyond that, if you think of
dealing with paper mail, you probably sort through it in the order the post
office delivered it.  And if something seems important, you might open it
before examining the next piece.   What's the e-mail analog?  Well, it is
including some sort of indication that a particular mail item has been
opened and examined.    This can be done in lots of ways -- bold face font
vs. normal, an explicit indicator such as a check mark, different colors of
text or background, or more than one of these.   Google mail for example
uses both a colored background and bold face to distinguish opened from
unopened mail..

So, some of these kinds of needs can be anticipated and dealt with by
thought, or by analogy with the real world.   Others are revealed during
testing of a prototype system.   Perhaps a user is asked to use a system
under design and is observed, and perhaps recorded on video tape or similar,
using the system.    How many times did he move the mouse?    What did he
want to do that was awkward or impossible?   How can we change things to
improve those aspects?

I think I would disagree with your assertion that making a distinction
between unread and read mail is an idea not many people would have.  It's
pretty clearly necessary if you think about the problem even briefly.  The
problem in designing user interfaces, in my experience, is more in making
them be appropriate for a wide variety of skills, experience levels, mental
models of how the system operates or can be used, goals in using the system,
and the fact that users' skills change over time.  An obvious response to
this is to say "make the system evolve with, or adapt to, the user" and
indeed this has been tried.   But that's in pretty direct conflict with the
idea of making the behavior of the system unastonishing - or unsurprising -
which is also desirable.

So, to try to answer your question more directly, it depends.   The need for
some features can be realized by thought, by analogy with the non-computer
world, through user testing, or through use in real situations.  Sometimes,
I find, the makes of software will even take a suggestion
from someone who uses their product!

                  Peter Capek

On Sun, May 25, 2008 at 12:50 PM, David Pinto <david_e_pinto at yahoo.ca>
wrote:

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>
> Hello.
>
> This is possibly a little removed from the usual posts to the list.
>
> Over the past few decades, we have all read hundreds of articles explaining
> how computers came to be.
>
> Yet most of these articles do not explain the various small intricacies of
> the internet world.
>
> Here's an example.
>
> When I call up the inbox of my yahoo account, all the subject lines which I
> have not yet opened are in boldface.
>
> Let's suppose I click on a given subject line.
>
> I read the item and then close it.
>
> If I then call up the inbox again, that particular subject line is no
> longer in boldface. It is in light face.
>
> The reason the subject line changes from bold face to light face is somehow
> buried somewhere in the computer program. Fine, but my question is how
> this idea was developed. Someone thought of this angle. Why? This does not
> seem like the sort of idea that most of us would have. And also, is there a
> purpose to this beyond the obvious one?
>
> Sorry if my question is a little difficult to understand, but I like to
> think that most people on this list will understand what I am trying to say.
>
> David Pinto
> Montreal, Canada
> david_e_pinto at yahoo.ca
>
>
>
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