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Re: research on location of submit buttons

for

From: John Foliot
Date: Apr 2, 2009 1:10PM

Angela French wrote:
>
> I know this will fail (or cause unhappiness among) data entry folks who
use
> keyboard instead of mouse. Though perhaps setting up a tab order could
help
> alleviate this.
>
> This is an internal application and I do not know whether any of the
possible
> users will be on assistive technologies.
> I was hoping I could get them to change it before it even gets out the
door
> for user testing if I could back it up with a little research.

(re-threaded for clarity - please respect threading protocols folks)

Steve and Angela,

You might want to investigate Jakob Nielsen's research of eye-tracking and
screen 'hot-spot' studies as a possible suggestion to this idea
(http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/). Colloquially, I have observed that
most right-handed users (re: mouse usage), when in a rest state on a web
page, will likely have the cursor positioned to the top-right quadrant of
the screen - conditioning perhaps due to page scrolling, where the scroll
bar starts at the top right corner? So, if you *really* need to place
submit buttons in a non-traditional place, I would suggest the right-hand
side, as opposed to the left-hand side.

The most important consideration however will remain user-testing - I am
personally unsure that this will be a workable solution. Remind your
'designers' that form should follow function - yes?

Cheers!

JF


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