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Re: FW: Adding a label to search box

for

From: Penny Roberts
Date: Apr 20, 2006 9:50AM

Hoffman, Allen wrote:

> Try putting the box with search near it up for five year olds and see
> how many times they have to try it to understand what the visual layout
> represents.


I realise that is was just an example so it isn't really fair game but...
I think that the problem there would be to do with the actual concept of
searching. The small amount of extra text afforded by a label wouldn't
help in such a scenario; it would require an explanation of what
searching is, how it works, what is does. So to an extent a certain
amount of understanding of convention (by the user) does have to be
assumed (we don't, for instance, explain on every page what hyperlinks
are and how to use them).
(Incidentally, and possibly interestingly, targeting in on the text box
would be the problem for many of those five year olds as studies have
shown that pre-schoolers have very poor mouse accuracy.)

Penny