Are the keywords / values useful to users?
Let's say I have an app with a ridiculously horrible graphical screen. I could place 90% of the properties I need for the user to set one of these fields which looks like
▪▪▪▪▪▪icy▪▪▪icy▪▪▪icy matter ▪height ▪ 1.3in ▪ ▪width ▪ 3.0in ▪ ▪top ▪ 3.2in ▪ ▪left ▪ 2.3in ▪ ▪caption ▪ 'awesome'▪ ▪order ▪ 3rd ▪ ▪▪▪▪▪▪icy▪▪▪icy▪▪▪icy matter
But, are they really good and useful, or am I just guessing it's because as a programmer I use them all the time in my IDE?
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The critical element that makes it much more user-friendly is the categories. As unclearly stated, in his answer, four or five points are correct.
Although, you can get away with more as long as you group them very briefly and carefully. For example, height and width can and should be grouped together because whenever users point to one, they are used to point to the other.
If your categories are very well laid out and only contain four to five items, then your customization screen can contain a lot more options without embarrassment, because the headings tell them what information they need at their disposal before they try to complete this section.
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It really depends on the type of application you are creating and the type of user access to it.
If they are technical types and there is some analysis going on with the application, I can see that the setup is pretty good. If the app is a little action or workflow oriented, I'm not sure how well that would fit.
Again, it all depends on what gives the end user the best performance.
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Ideally, you will have good defaults, so the user won't need to change anything ... But if it's unavoidable and you're smart, I think it can be done.
A few tips:
- Break them down into categories ("user interface", "database", "file format" or whatever)
- Set the most relevant parameters first
- Document all settings: if it's really, really obvious (to the non-developer), include a sentence or two describing what he does.
- Examples are really good
- Describe what values are acceptable (I have included a regexp used to validate parameters in the past ... but this was aimed at a technical audience).
You probably can't do it with the default control ... So write your own. It will take a while, but IMHO it's worth it.
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The number of properties is a relevant factor here.
I feel like four or five can be excusable. Seven can push him.
My experience is that when it gets to tens or hundreds, it becomes unusable. People can no longer just read all the entries to find the function they want without secret recipes that are passed down from power user to power user.
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it is of course useful.
For simple concepts, this is sufficient. I find that I often try to get the user to enter something they don't understand. At times, it was data that I don't understand.
Then I feel REALLY IMPORTANT to get a good idea of what exactly your data represents, and then instead of querying a table of numbers, find a way to inform my user of what they are entering at the same time they log in.
For example, in the very simple example you give (pretend it's hard), you can actually display the image on the screen as well as the data. As you enter data, the field may move slightly or change size noticeably.
Then you could do it by letting them drag the field edges and drag them back.
While this is too simple an example to justify such an effort, I have had great success - for example creating a circuit where you have to contain DS0 in a DS0 group inside DS1 or T1 that is in the T1s bundle in OC-3 that is in one of 3 channels on a fiber loop.
It was actually much more complicated and it took 10 engineers in 2 days to properly document it once they figured out what I was asking for. At one point we had 4 whiteboards full of rearrangements, then we reorganized them into one (very crowded) piece of paper.
Once I figured it out, I made a great interface for it.
Plus, this article became a marketing document itself - they never described what their box actually did before (and that's exactly what their marketing manager said when he looked at the paper).
So, the shorter version for takeaway: for anything that isn't obvious, try to fully analyze and understand the business problem behind the data you submit / request from the client. Once you remember it, figure out what exactly caused the breakthrough and turned it into a GUI.
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