i ust went through the process of sending an SMS, looking for usability issues. Besides obvious issues (like speed) it's often the small things that make an app comfortable or awkward to use. I think with the previous issues solved, the SMS app would be a little nicer to use. I haven't filed all this thigns as trac issues, i guess quickdev is the one that should be commenting on the feasability of implementing them, as I have never looked at the code in question, nor am I familiar with efl.
SMS Content
Define Recipients
SMS Content
- Existing trac issues: Allow empty text messages (with warhing?) and get char counting right.
- Selecting a message highlights it yellow, but nothing else is possible. Clicking (or double-clicking) should "Show" it which let's us remove an unneccessary button and is more intuitive.
- "Options" button should indicate that it leads to more options ("Show..." or "Show^")
- Inbox (and many other places) should show contact name rather than number if its in the contacts (need for a function num2name that returns contact name or number?)
Define Recipients
- Put "Add contact" into the upper part of the "Add reipients" part for consistency with the dialer app.
- Even better, just invoke the dialer here, which makes for good usability reuse. (most of the time, we'll only need one contact; I'd guess). invoking dialer also allows us to punch in a number immediately without having to press an unneeded "Add number button".
- The "Remove" button is confusing with regard to what gets removed (especially if there is no contact yet). Why not remove it and only show it as a "X" button on the contact line when that contact is selected.
- Also here we should show contact names rather than numbers when replying to a number in my contact list.
- A "recently called" list would be nice (I often send messages to only a handful of people)
- "Continue" button should be called "Send" to make clear that this is the last step an we are actually going to send now.
- Dialer should have a preferene whether we start it in "number punching" mode, it contact list selection mode or in (a yet to be created) "last calls/messages" mode.
Composing an SMS isn't intuitive to me - there's no backspace on the keyboard. How do you delete a word/letter either before or after you put it 'up' into the SMS?
There is a backspace on the "terminal" type of keyboard that I use. Accessing backspace on that word prediction keyboard is done by swiping the stylus from right to left over the keyboard area if I remember correctly. This is an upstream keyboard done by e/illume so its design is out of our bounds.