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XNA Shaman
VS 2005 drives me crazy with all these changes!

Yesterday I watched a usability study where the user was a little frustrated about seemingly gratuitous changes we have made in the product. They were using a pre-release version of VS 2005 and quickly asked these questions:

  1. Why is there a MenuStrip in the toolbox but no Menu control?
  2. Why is the Grid turned off on the Windows Form designer?
  3. Why has the C# keyboard bindings changed?

Now I'll take complete responsibility for the 3rd change and I'll talk about in my next blog (both Don Box and Chris Sells are looking for me about the those changes!).

The interesting thing was that when we had to chance to explain why we made the changes, the user was happy with the explanations. So here is the challenge - what's the most effective way to explain the reason for the change so our users will actually see it? I know I don't read the README files for the bulk of the software I install and I always quickly dismiss the “Tip of the Day“ type dialogs that some software uses.

Anyone had a good experience with some software that gave them this context? Any suggestions for what to do here?

 

Posted: Thursday, June 10, 2004 9:22 PM by JoeN
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Comments

Uwe said:

Maybe some non-modal help windows, like the balloon-tips on the XP TaskBar and Start Menu, when you hover your examples 1.) and 2.), and maybe the same kind of help window, when the user uses an old C# keyboard binding shortcut for the first time.

I also do like message boxes with a checkbox "Don't show this message/info again" and the ability to reset the checkboxes in the applications options dialog.
# June 10, 2004 9:45 PM

Raj Kaimal said:


Joe,
Here is my suggestion. Create a flash based "What is new movie". The movie should have categories of the new features. Clicking on each item in each category will play a movie that walks you through that feature with subtitles. The movie should get right to the new feature and explain it. A great example of this is the intro walkthrough on the OneNote 2003 Eval CD. I prefer to "see" a new feature rather than read about it.

On a different note, for folks that like keyboard shortcuts, it would be nice if the Visual Studio splash screen had a section where it displayed the "Keyboard Shortcut of the day". You could also have a link to a random "New Feature" that took you to a movie about the new feature.

I agree, I don't like the "Tip of the day" dialog boxes but getting information through the splash screen does not bother me as I can't do anything else while VS.NET is loading.

# June 10, 2004 10:16 PM

Ben said:

Alternatively, maybe the fine folks on the team could speed up startup of VS.NET such that the need for a splash screen evaporated. :) Splash screens are so 90's.

If anyone from Adobe reads this entry, I'm talking to you too. I really don't need a fake alpha-blended splash screen in acrobat thanks! :)
# June 11, 2004 5:16 AM

ToddM said:

Raj's Flash idea is a good one. I think it could also be as simple as shipping a DVD (as in video) that shows all of the nifty new features. People could watch it from their PC, on their TV, on a long plane ride -- where ever.

It's like you said, once they saw what to do, they were happy.

I sometimes prefer a video to an interactive Flash display because I find it easier to fast-forward (at multiple speeds) when I want to quickly skim past something. You could add VCR-like controls to the Flash demo, but I simply find the controls on my remote much easier to use (I already have physical memory as to where they are, it's a REAL remote control, etc.)
# June 11, 2004 5:25 AM

J. Daniel Smith said:

How about some more explanatory text in the help files?

With the plethora of options, it quickly becomes difficult to know which ones to set/change...and WHY. Some text like "...the default was changed because of XXX, to restore the old behavior do YYY..."
# June 11, 2004 5:25 AM

Ed Eichman said:

Sometime over 10 years ago, someone in the company where I worked (a Mac development shop) handed me a MacNosey (spelling?) debugger package, and asked me to check it out. Seems that they had been buying versions for a while, but no one had figured out how it worked.

The guy who made the debugger made me look really smart by including a bunch of videos explaining everything. It was mondo-easy to follow. I was using it to find tough bugs that the usual MPW debugger couldn't find within hours, and felt fairly expert within a day or two.

No marketing bullshit - no Hollywood production - just lots of video available as ubiquitously as F1 help with the same info presented in video. Yes, I know reading can do all this, and video is a lot harder,
but it is MUCH easier to digest.
# June 11, 2004 6:52 AM

Dave Kingston said:

I gotta put my two cents worth in for videos. Flash is ok, but I also think a DVD would be way better to deal with.

I get enough material in the reading format. Do you really want to add to my reading list?
# June 11, 2004 10:32 AM

Michael Giagnocavo said:

I suggest linking it into the "Choose your settings". So after the "C#" profile is selected, you could lead the user through some text. Since that dialog is new to VS users, chances are they're going slower through it.

I guess you could get really advanced and have some sort of "unresolved key combo" handling, detect the context, compare to the setting selected and previous setting, and then pop up something to say "Hey, looking for this? We moved it for your benefit."

Also, I guess you could have some kind of smart-tag or something in the keyboard options dialog, and display this when the user selects "Visual Studio 2003" settings.
# June 13, 2004 10:48 PM

Keith Hill said:

>> If anyone from Adobe reads this entry, I'm talking to you too.

ROFLMAO! That's a good one. Why does AcrobatReader take so darn long to load up anyway?
# June 21, 2004 8:55 AM

ME said:

On Adobe. I already skip all the .pdf google results because of the slow start up.
There was a blog on how to make it faster by dissabling the majority of the plug ins. But still, too slow for me.
Just go with the regular HTML stuff.
I don't print anyway, and safe the trees for oxygen production instead of paper production.

So yes, speed is very important. Related to this, did the Visual Studio help launch got a bit quicker? Maybe I have too many packages installed. But the internal help is so slow that a regular google querry is much faster.
Makes me wonder why I installed all this space consuming MSDN. What about a SOA on help.
I know you can configure to use external help. But it is all getting too slow.

ME
# June 23, 2004 8:03 AM
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