Minor Usability Suggestions
Posted: Mon Mar 26, 2012 9:50 am
On Aquire Dialog
- You show dpi scan increments by ones. Not many people are going to desire to set a dpi to something like 223. Normally settings in most dpi dialogs start at 75 and then increment by 100s. By incrementing by ones in the selection list you make it time consuming to switch from say 100 to 200. My suggestion is to increment them by 100s, that is the dpi choices in the drop down would be (75,100,200,300,400,500,600...2400). This way its quick to change to most standard dpi choices that most people make. Then allow to type into the drop down field for someone who wants a custom size.
On Image List
- Provide ability to right click on an image and get a popup menu with choices to save, remove (any operation will be executed only for image that mouse is hovering over in right click menu)
Reasoning: I often scan several images at once that may not be part of a related group and then trying to save each one via the "unselect all, select one, then go to save menu" is time consuming when a simple mouse over thumbnail, right click, and choose save is so much quicker workflow. I know some of these choices are located in menus, but it is quicker to utilize a popup menu.
Icons for quick image adjustments:
In control bar at bottom of screen next to the existing rotate icons - add an autodeskew button, rotate 180 button, and undo
Clear functionality:
If say I have 1 image selected of several in image list and I save that 1 file, I get prompted to clear the image list. From experience, I know that it will clear all the images not just the one I have selected but a new user may not and losing a ton of scan work might be enough to make them shy away from using the program. So a small usability suggestion, on the dialog have text that clearly warns the user that this will clear all images in the list. Or perhaps you clear only the selected one and as an option provide on same dialog a checkbox option to clear all images. Your assumption is that workflow for users will be to scan a bunch of images, save them all to separate files in batch, and wish to clear them. But you should not assume what a user will do with the program and especially with a function that clears all scanned work.
PDF Properties:
Thank you for adding the PDF properties feature, but I noticed that you only have these in the save options menu. While that is great to have some forced defaults, not all properties will be the same for all scans. For example, I may have several scans and each one will have a different PDF title or subject property. So it makes sense to have this as part of the save dialog. Perhaps when PDF drop down is selected it shows this fields in the dialog. It would also be a great feature if each of these properties fields including keyword would remember the last 10 or 20 typed entries and display them as a drop down selection field. Then as I process a batch of files, I can then quickly choose the last ones used for a quicker processing workflow. Also it should be mentioned that PDF provide 2 places for metadata - 1) Information Dictionary 2) XMP Metadata. Good article: http://www.pragmaticpdf.com/2009/07/inf ... adata.html
Keyword selection list:
For PDF properties or if you eventually support JPG IPTC metadata, then it would be great to see the ability for users to manage a list of common keywords (business, personal, legal, bank, receipt, medical, etc). Then on the keyword field provide a button that pops up multi-selection list that displays these user maintained keywords for users to select from.
- You show dpi scan increments by ones. Not many people are going to desire to set a dpi to something like 223. Normally settings in most dpi dialogs start at 75 and then increment by 100s. By incrementing by ones in the selection list you make it time consuming to switch from say 100 to 200. My suggestion is to increment them by 100s, that is the dpi choices in the drop down would be (75,100,200,300,400,500,600...2400). This way its quick to change to most standard dpi choices that most people make. Then allow to type into the drop down field for someone who wants a custom size.
On Image List
- Provide ability to right click on an image and get a popup menu with choices to save, remove (any operation will be executed only for image that mouse is hovering over in right click menu)
Reasoning: I often scan several images at once that may not be part of a related group and then trying to save each one via the "unselect all, select one, then go to save menu" is time consuming when a simple mouse over thumbnail, right click, and choose save is so much quicker workflow. I know some of these choices are located in menus, but it is quicker to utilize a popup menu.
Icons for quick image adjustments:
In control bar at bottom of screen next to the existing rotate icons - add an autodeskew button, rotate 180 button, and undo
Clear functionality:
If say I have 1 image selected of several in image list and I save that 1 file, I get prompted to clear the image list. From experience, I know that it will clear all the images not just the one I have selected but a new user may not and losing a ton of scan work might be enough to make them shy away from using the program. So a small usability suggestion, on the dialog have text that clearly warns the user that this will clear all images in the list. Or perhaps you clear only the selected one and as an option provide on same dialog a checkbox option to clear all images. Your assumption is that workflow for users will be to scan a bunch of images, save them all to separate files in batch, and wish to clear them. But you should not assume what a user will do with the program and especially with a function that clears all scanned work.
PDF Properties:
Thank you for adding the PDF properties feature, but I noticed that you only have these in the save options menu. While that is great to have some forced defaults, not all properties will be the same for all scans. For example, I may have several scans and each one will have a different PDF title or subject property. So it makes sense to have this as part of the save dialog. Perhaps when PDF drop down is selected it shows this fields in the dialog. It would also be a great feature if each of these properties fields including keyword would remember the last 10 or 20 typed entries and display them as a drop down selection field. Then as I process a batch of files, I can then quickly choose the last ones used for a quicker processing workflow. Also it should be mentioned that PDF provide 2 places for metadata - 1) Information Dictionary 2) XMP Metadata. Good article: http://www.pragmaticpdf.com/2009/07/inf ... adata.html
Keyword selection list:
For PDF properties or if you eventually support JPG IPTC metadata, then it would be great to see the ability for users to manage a list of common keywords (business, personal, legal, bank, receipt, medical, etc). Then on the keyword field provide a button that pops up multi-selection list that displays these user maintained keywords for users to select from.