Chapter 20 -- Previews Are Cool

Chapter 20

In post-World War II Japan, many foreigners had an interesting problem whenever they went to restaurants: they had no idea what they wereordering. Dishes like teriyaki, tempura, and sushi were not yet well known outside of Japan. By the 1960s, some restaurant owners realized that if they displayed plastic models of their dishes, their foreign customers would better understand what they were ordering and would be more satisfied with their choices. This practice continues today, and you often see sample dishes displayed in the front of Japanese restaurants, both in Japan and here.

Although I've never found the glazed plastic models of food displayed in Japanese restaurants to be especially appetizing, they do give you an effective preview of what to expect when you make a selection. In software, some of the text used to describe selections may as well be in a foreign language, as it is often meaningless or difficult to understand. For example, what are Albertus, Andy, Bertram, Chiller, Edda, Ginko, Nadianne, and Thunderbird? If you have done a fair amount of word processing, you might recognize these as names of typefaces. Do you have any idea what they look like? How much work would it take for you to find out? Previews can help you understand such choices with little effort.

Previews are most effective in the following circumstances:

• You need to present a list of choices to the user and the meaning of the choices isn't clear, such as a list of typefaces in a word processing program.
• You need to present several choices that are hard to differentiate and compare, such as a list of different document styles in a word processing program.
• You need to present a combination of choices and the user cannot effectively make a choice without being able to see its impact on other choices, such as when selecting a color scheme.
• You need to present several choices that are time-consuming to perform, such as a list of special effects in an image-processing program.
• You provide a command that is costly to do incorrectly, such as printing a document.

Previews range in accuracy from simple fixed-icon representations to exact replicas, but they serve to give immediate visual feedback. Previews give the user the ability to quickly and easily determine the results of a selection without having to make the selection. They make features self-explanatory and easy to understand, reducing the need for documentation, and also make the user more productive by reducing the chance of making bad choices. Best of all, they help make using software an enjoyable experience by helping the user focus on the task and not on the software.

TIP

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Previews help users make choices and verify results by giving immediate visual feedback before the user makes a selection.