So Which Is It?
Here's the UI on the gas pump that I saw while I was filling up my tank this morning:
So what do I do? Begin fueling or wait? Wait for what? For how long? Turns out the wait was waiting for me to pick up the pump handle. Really.
While I was filling the tank, they also saw fit to put an ad up on the display. 90% of the display was filled with the Mobil logo. Then the bottom had the text "Enjoy a hot cup of coffee only 69 cents." (or some such needless wordy urging to buy their coffee)
Well, it almost had that - the text didn't quite fit so the single line of text alternated between "Enjoy a hot cup of coffee only 69" and "cents" each hogging the display for about 5 seconds. You have a 50/50 chance of lookup up and seeing "cents" That's it: "cents"
Lessons learned for your UI:
- Don't give your users an imperative that makes no sense
- Check the appearance of your UI before you commit
- For fluid UI, consider a check for when UI elements won't fit and issue a warning at authoring time.