Should I stay or should I go?
December 19th, 2006 by xamountButton labels can be tricky. Get the labels right and users fly through dialogs with ease. Assign labels that are slightly off and you present a mental roadblock every time the user is required to make a decision.
Which brings us to one of the minor, likely unnoticed changes in GameTap 1.7: what happens when you try to leave a paused game? Prior to 1.7 we landed on a fairly common and standard couple of labels for the dialog:
No, I don’t want to continue playing. So Cancel, right? Oh wait, no. I DO want to continue to leave this game. So Continue? Wait, what? Part of the problem is that Continue and Cancel are somewhat divorced from the context of what you’ve just elected to do by closing the InfoCard. So you have to reread the dialog text to make sure you know what you’re doing.
Sure, this isn’t the end of the world. If you go back and read the text, you’re likely going to end up just fine. The issue here is that you end up stuttering over what should be a relatively easy decision.
So what’s the fix? Yes and No labels? Yes, I’m sure I want to leave. Or No I don’t want to leave. But we’re still left with labels that require you to read the dialog text. Are there any labels that don’t require that? Labels that fall in line with the action you’ve just taken (clicking away from the paused game)? We think so:
Of course, working through this kind of “fix” is nowhere near as exciting and glamorous as adding Buddy Leaderboards, designing a screen name popup menu, or even providing a Downloaded game subring. But it’s all part of the deal: making GameTap a better experience from the dinkiest of dialogs to the coolest of games.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Interestingly enough, shortly after we made this bitty change, I bought some software from Symantec and chose the “download and CD” option. However, because the download version was only available for XP, they took me through an additional step — AND I CHOSE THE WRONG BUTTON. What a bummer. The choice I made cancelled the download portion of my order, and all because of button positioning and labeling (and that I didn’t carefully read the instructions).
I’m happy to report that Symantec has since changed the order path so nobody else will bump into what I did (but it sure took the punch out of this comment!)
December 19th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
Ok, that’s great and whatnot. I’m more concerned with GT letting me add Deus Ex to my favorites as a coming soon title and then totally removing any mention of the game a few days later. Hopefully, GT will still add the game sooner rather than never.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:58 pm
Hmm, good catch. We’re looking into it right now…
December 19th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Okay, I checked with the content and publishing team. Deus Ex really is coming soon and you’ll see it back in the catalog very shortly. I don’t know yet whether it will still be in your favorites when it reappears (but it should).
Apologies for the mix-up. And we’re working to resolve the issue so it won’t happen again.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:48 pm
yay!
December 19th, 2006 at 7:06 pm
I’m glad to see that you guys really are trying to pay attention to good usability design and I’m even happier to have found out you’ve got a blog focused on it since xamount posted the link over at Evil Avatar.
I’ve read through both the Apple and the Gnome HIGs and I remember one point they stressed was that button labels should actions rather than boolean values (Yes/No, Yes/Cancel, etc). This is a great example of this principle in action.
Like I said, I’m glad to see you guys pay attention to this kind of thing as it makes the GameTap experience all the more enjoyable.