Two problems
4yr
@pinkapricorn
Hey guys. In this post I want to talk about two things:
-A confusing icon
-Clicking "Mark as Complete" by mistake
Confusing Icon
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Please refer to the attached image. See those two light gray icons? See how one goes with the view count and the other is a checkbox for "Mark as completed"?
Because the icon next to the view count is similar in shape and value to the icon for checking "Mark as Completed", I instinctively thought it was clickable and experienced a bit of discomfort when I clicked it and nothing happened. It took my mind out of automatic mode and I had to think about the interface as opposed to what I was trying to accomplish from it.
A small thing, but I point it out because when I read Steve Krug's book "Don't Make Me Think" he taught me that's the #1 rule of UI design. "Designing With the Mind in Mind" talked about it as well when they were explaining the limits of human working memory and why a UI needs to occupy as little of that as possible so the person can focus on their goal. That's why I notice this stuff :)
Of course I know that there will never be a perfect UI and that time/budget constraints are always a factor, but this seems like something you could change cheap and easy. You probably could just make a new image file and save it over the top of the old one. :)
I'm thinking you'd want to go with black since red would communicate "I stand out because I'm important" and grey is the color it is now.
Or if it's really important for it to stay gray for some reason, then make the silhouette drastically different from the checkbox.
At the end of the day it's your call if this is even worth fixing but just doing my duty here and making suggestions :)
Clicking "Mark as Complete" by mistake
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Now this problem is more critical. I checked "Marked as Complete" on a video just to see what would happen and I felt a sense of dread when I discovered I could not uncheck it! Please turn this into a toggle. :)
I point this out not only for the obvious reason that I want to be able to uncheck stuff but also because I'm thinking about the concept of a UI making its users feel free to explore as opposed to them being afraid of making mistakes. Being low risk, basically. Well, being able to undo your mistakes plays into this :)
The "Mark as Complete" button is probably going to stay fixed once it's clicked. One reason is because a user gets points when they watch a lesson or mark a lesson as complete. If users can toggle it on and off it would constantly mess with that total. https://bbnerd.com/
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4yr
We published an update today that allows you to un-complete a lesson :)
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4yr
@pinkapricorn yeah I can absolutely see how that eye would be confusing right next to a clickable icon. We should definitely make it a dark grey or black to provide contrast.
The "Mark as Complete" button is probably going to stay fixed once it's clicked. One reason is because a user gets points when they watch a lesson or mark a lesson as complete. If users can toggle it on and off it would constantly mess with that total. However, a more important question that I don't think you really answered is why it would be beneficial to the artist?
I don't see how being able to "unmark" an episode that you've seen would help you and I have a hard time imagining a lot of users power clicking the "mark as complete" button just to turn around and be upset that they can't go back and uncheck it. Maybe I'm missing something that you can explain to me, but as of right now its not something we want to treat as a light switch. One thing we might be able to do is provide a period of time where a user can toggle it, but it gets locked in and the points get added after a set duration of it being marked as complete.
@John B Hmm, okay, I'll try to explain better. Alright with the "Marked as complete" thing I was thinking about if a user accidentally clicks on it when they haven't yet finished the episode. And then they don't finish it in that sitting. Like they get distracted and go do something else. Then they come back like, tomorrow or next week or something, and the episode hasn't saved their spot because it thinks they are finished. Or they don't even go back to it at all because they think it's done.
||||"One thing we might be able to do is provide a period of time where a user can toggle it, but it gets locked in and the points get added after a set duration of it being marked as complete."
That might be the best solution. If somebody accidentally clicks it, they will probably notice it quickly because it turns bright red when clicked.
