hardware testing checkboxes are poorly placed

[njh]

Binary package hint: hwtest-gtk

The interface for the hardware testing applet is cumbersome.

I suggest replacing the 'yes', 'no', 'skip' radio buttons with normal buttons. skip is equivalent to next, so the final interface is four buttons along the bottom:
_Yes _No _Skip _Previous

Clicking each records the result and moves on.

8.10 intrepid/main
0.1-0ubuntu10

[Ara Pulido (ara)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as triaged and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Henrik Nilsen Omma (henrik)]

Yes, this seems like a sensible change. We currently use the natural language words 'Yes' and 'No' as opposed to the result-centric 'Pass' and 'Fail', however we might wan to make it more transparent that as 'Yes' will result in a pass. Will this always be the case, or rather can we commit to insisting that questions should always be formulated in such a way that it will be the case? If so it might be enough to mention that in a note at the start of testing. Or perhaps we could use a status bar that displays 'Yes - Pass', 'No - Fail' and 'Skip - comment required'.

[Marc Tardif (cr3)]

I believe the original poster simply suggested replacing the Yes/No/Skip radio buttons with actual buttons, rather than clarifying the meaning or changing the label. This suggestion is reminiscent of Jef Raskin's approach described in the Humane Interface which attempts to reduce the number of steps to accomplish a task. So, instead of having to two steps:

1. Select a Yes/No/Skip radio button
2. Click on the Next button

This could indeed be simplified to a single step:

1. Click on the Yes/No/Skip button

My concern with this approach is that it breaks the flow of thought when an answer should be supplemented with further information. For example, my first reaction is to answer the Yes/No/Skip question and my second reaction is to explain why in the comment text area. If clicking on the answer brings me directly to the next test, I might completely miss providing further information.

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

What should happen with this bug? Should the radio buttons then be replaced with simple buttons, and maybe when clicking No, ask the user to comment on the problem?

[Marc Tardif (cr3)]

I can appreciate the user experience motivation expressed by the original poster and I would like to preserve it for posterity by setting the status to wishlist. The reason I don't feel particularly compelled to implement the solution at this point is that I feel this would make more sense as part of a broader user interface overhaul. This sounds actually quite appealing in the near future considering the interface hasn't changed much since the beginning.