Bug 396414

Summary: There is an usability issue in mobile swipe item
Product: [Frameworks and Libraries] frameworks-kirigami Reporter: Emmanuel Lepage Vallée <emmanuel.lepage>
Component: generalAssignee: Marco Martin <notmart>
Status: CONFIRMED ---    
Severity: normal CC: nate
Priority: NOR Keywords: usability
Version First Reported In: Master   
Target Milestone: Not decided   
Platform: Other   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Emmanuel Lepage Vallée 2018-07-11 17:46:18 UTC
(disclaimer: This is a summary of a meeting discussion)

When using swipe item, you get a list of action represented as icons. On the desktop, you can have a tooltip and the user kind of expect them. On the mobile, you may or may not be able to hold the icon pressed, but this is hard to discover.

The users seem scare to click on actions where they are not sure what the icon does. Given the worst case scenario in Ring-KDE is doing a phone call by accident, the user just ignore the actions because they are scared.

Some ways to showing the action text (label) either by displaying the actions vertically, a popup or anything else would be needed to fix this perceived problem. More discussions are needed with the VDG about this.
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2018-07-13 16:49:24 UTC
> The users seem scare to click on actions where they are not sure what the icon does.

This is the inherent problem with icon-only buttons in all situations. Unless the icon *very very clearly* communicates what it's going to do when you push it, a lot of users will be too nervous to push it at all.

Showing an overlay that displays a vertical list of actions with both icons and text seems like it would be the most humane. We already have a UI for this; maybe we just need to use it and abandon the "swipe to show inline buttons" paradigm. Or we could even make the overlay itself appear on swipe, if that interaction pattern is desired.
Comment 2 Marco Martin 2018-08-06 13:46:57 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> Showing an overlay that displays a vertical list of actions with both icons
> and text seems like it would be the most humane. We already have a UI for
> this; maybe we just need to use it and abandon the "swipe to show inline

hmm, what it is? could you elaborate what this should do?
Comment 3 Emmanuel Lepage Vallée 2018-08-06 13:51:41 UTC
> hmm, what it is? could you elaborate what this should do?

This can wait for next week with VDG people? Right now that was one of the issue raised when I a/b tested Ring-KDE at my local hackerspace.
Comment 4 Nate Graham 2018-08-06 13:53:30 UTC
(In reply to Marco Martin from comment #2)
> (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> > Showing an overlay that displays a vertical list of actions with both icons
> > and text seems like it would be the most humane. We already have a UI for
> > this; maybe we just need to use it and abandon the "swipe to show inline
> 
> hmm, what it is? could you elaborate what this should do?

My idea is basically that when you swipe on an item, instead of having icon-only action buttons appear inline, they would appear along with text on an overlaysheet, the way Discover used to do for apps that could be downloaded from multiple sources: https://cgit.kde.org/discover.git/tree/discover/qml/ApplicationPage.qml?h=Plasma/5.12#n48
Comment 5 Marco Martin 2019-02-11 09:24:05 UTC
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #4)
> (In reply to Marco Martin from comment #2)
> > (In reply to Nate Graham from comment #1)
> > > Showing an overlay that displays a vertical list of actions with both icons
> > > and text seems like it would be the most humane. We already have a UI for
> > > this; maybe we just need to use it and abandon the "swipe to show inline
> > 
> > hmm, what it is? could you elaborate what this should do?
> 
> My idea is basically that when you swipe on an item, instead of having
> icon-only action buttons appear inline, they would appear along with text on
> an overlaysheet, the way Discover used to do for apps that could be
> downloaded from multiple sources:
> https://cgit.kde.org/discover.git/tree/discover/qml/ApplicationPage.
> qml?h=Plasma/5.12#n48

no, can't have an overlaysheet per item
Comment 6 Marco Martin 2019-02-11 09:26:55 UTC
the thing is: this should always be used when the action is very obvious (delete, answer and what not)
and there should be one-two actions maximum, any different use of this, is abuse..
I'm not going to remove components just because people are using it wrong
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2019-02-11 16:14:03 UTC
Nobody's saying the component should be removed, just that it would be nice if the buttons somehow had text too. On mobile where it's important to have big touch targets, that could make them easier to use too.