Forum Discussion
Instruction Overload or No?
Hey Friends!
I'm writing to vent but maybe I'm in the wrong here. I created an activity for a medical course. There's a question, an image to review to get the answer, and then a submit button at ...
I like Judy's version that moves the text entry field closer to the Submit button. That does feel like an improvement for usability.
The other tweak you could make is changing the color of the text entry field from yellow to white or gray with a thin border around it. Right now, the formatting of the text entry box just looks like a yellow rectangle. It doesn't have the affordances that make it look more like a text entry box and signal "hey, this is a UI element you've seen before and know how to use." Even though you have the text within the box, the formatting might still improve it.
There are some more tips for improving the usability of text fields in this article that you might want to review. https://medium.com/@orazberdisaparov/how-to-ux-text-field-best-practices-6188bfe9ae5b
Should they be able to figure it out with the current version? Sure, and most people will. But if you can improve the UX a little to make it require less thought, you can make a few little changes to do so.
Well said. That reminds me of a book I read years ago: "Don't Make Me Think," by Steve Krug. It was about simplifying websites, but the title advice applies more broadly. The more someone has to think about how to navigate or what a design element means, the less they can think about the actual content.
