
The Opposite of Fitts' Law - bdfh42
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/03/the-opposite-of-fitts-law.html
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dagw
Another relevant example would be the voting arrows here on this site. I don't
know about anyone else, but I have voted comments the wrong way on a number of
occasions. Having some sort of obvious undo vote feature might be nice as
well.

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jlgosse
Are we using the same site right now? I see only "up" votes, so how could you
possibly make the mistake of making a "down" vote?

~~~
alanthonyc
I think you need 200 karma before you can start downvoting.

~~~
eru
The target may shifts over time, as karma inflation goes its course.

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rm-rf
Another example is OS X's active screen corners.

If I set the upper right corner to something useful, like 'Beam me up Scotty',
I have about a .5 probability of transporting back to the Enterprise when I
really wanted to find a file.

Active corners are cool, but they make a couple other functions difficult to
use.

~~~
wtallis
When I set up an active screen corner action, I always go for the top-right
corner first, because that's the corner my cursor is least likely to hit. I
always bring up the spotlight menu with the keyboard, because there's nothing
useful to do with it without moving my hands to keyboard anyways. Since search
results can be picked using the arrow keys, there's no need to move your
cursor away from the part of the screen that you're working in.

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cool-RR
For at least 10 years I've wanted to have a GUI version of this switch:

[http://awaregeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/10/panikknap.jp...](http://awaregeek.com/wp-
content/uploads/2007/10/panikknap.jpg)

(This is the best picture I could find, ideally I'd want the switch to be
facing the person.)

I think it'll be possible to do something like this in-browser, with an
animation that shows the plastic cover opening.

~~~
johns
One way to achieve that would be to make the user check a confirmation box
before enabling the submit button. I've used this in a couple places and I've
never seen it confuse anyone.

~~~
lotharbot
I was doing my taxes the other day and clicked a button to import some
information. It automatically upgraded me from the free version of the tax
software (which doesn't have that specific functionality) to the paid version
-- no confirmation, no "are you sure?", no undo function.

Had I not been planning on upgrading to the paid version anyway, I'd have been
really, really upset.

Compare this to, say, Amazon. In order to purchase something, I add it to my
cart, and then go through a checkout process, which clearly details what I'm
buying and lets me remove stuff from my cart. It's pretty dang hard to
accidentally buy something on Amazon.

Having an "enable" checkbox or a post-click "are you sure you want to [clear
description of what you clicked]?" confirmation are great ways to help users
avoid accidentally deleting something they wanted to send, or sending
something they wanted to save, or buying something they wanted to remove from
their cart.

~~~
ggchappell
That problem with the tax software does not sound like something to be kept
secret. What were you using?

~~~
lotharbot
H&R Block's online version.

The initial page actually did say that to import the info required an upgrade,
but it was poorly worded, and the lack of a confirmation or undo option was
frustrating. I put in a complaint to their customer service guys, who said
that the only way to go back to the free version is to register a new account.

Like I said, had I not actually planned to upgrade to the paid version partway
through the process, I'd have been extremely angry and probably gone to one of
their competitors.

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alanh
Not an "opposite" so much as another way of thinking about Fitts', but this is
definitely important when designing interfaces.

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phatboyslim
Those who use Outlook will probably agree that the "Reply All" button is just
a bit too close to the "Reply" button.

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Qz
Hotmail does the same with "New | Delete | Junk"

My CMU webmail recently moved the Delete button to the middle of the button
bar, as far away from other buttons as possible. It's practically impossible
to misclick, unless you're clicking around with your eyes closed.

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RyanMcGreal
>Like, say, the "delete all my work" button?

Why on earth would an application designer provide a non-recoverable way to
delete everything in the first place?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Because you're leaving their hosted service and you don't want them to
continue datamining your documents?

~~~
Hexstream
Having a "delete all my work" button and doing datamining are not mutually
exclusive...

The "delete all my work" button might mean "make my stuff inaccessible for me
and all normal users".

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ableal
And the software equivalent of the switch cover, the confirmation dialog ...

(which, coming to think of it, works the opposite way - instead of "enable,
activate", it's "activate, confirm")

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CapitalistCartr
Picking on Google Mail is a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. I use Gmail,
and I like many of it's qualities, but it has a UI that seems to have been
designed by a 9 year old boy on his first experiment. It's laughably random,
or perhaps 'eccentric'.

~~~
qcassidy
Really? I've never seen a better webmail interface than Gmail's. Can you
justify your claim by providing some of "it's" qualities that are so
laughable?

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alanh
I hate to get into a flamewar but 90% of the themes they are so proud of break
basic usability guidelines: Too distracting, not enough contrast between read
and unread items, ignoring color theory for the meaning of colors used in the
interface, etc. Drives me crazy.

Edit: And as I posted to my Tumblr (<http://ajh.us/GmUI>) just 5 days ago:

> Today I opened a Gmail window. At the top of the screen, I saw a yellow
> message beginning, “Hey, this is important! …” I never finished reading it
> because I had clicked something else (a message) and the supposedly
> important message disappeared, never to be seen again.

> So the Gmail team either

> 1\. Lied about the importance of the message, or

> 2\. Totally failed to make me actually read it.

> Not so impressive UI design.

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daniel02216
I've seen 'Hey, this is important!' before: on a gmail account that had its
password compromised. I seem to recall that it was 'you might be compromised,
you should verify your secondary address for account recovery' You might want
to check your Gmail usage log at the bottom of the window, check your
secondary address, and change your password.

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sesqu
Oh, it's because they think the account is compromised? Huh. I've had that
message a few times before, noted that yes, that is the recovery address I
told them about and yes, it's wrong, but no, I won't update it just because
it's been a while. If I had known they asked because they noticed I'd logged
in from a new location, I would have updated the record.

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alexkay
_I can tell what you're thinking. Did he click Send or Save Now? Well, to tell
you the truth, in all the excitement of composing that angry email, I kind of
lost track myself. Good thing we can easily undo a sent mail! Oh wait, we
totally can't. Consider my seat, or at least that particular rash email,
ejected._

If you ever wished you could undo that sent email, there's an "Undo Send"
feature in Gmail Labs which you can enable.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's not really relevant to the point he's trying to make but a simple low-
tech hack is to write your message first, then put in the recipients email
addresses.

With no email address, any accidental send will fail.

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JeremyBanks
I include the email addresses but append ".invalid", which achives the same
result.

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chronomex
I tell mutt to automatically sign + encrypt outgoing email. Since I so rarely
send mail to people who have PGP keys, mutt almost always asks me to pick a
recipient key before it'll send.

