Hi, Am 17.09.2014 16:04, schrieb John Scipione:
Unfortunately I don't have the HCI data to show, it's "secret" so I guess whichever way makes the most sense to you guys is fine. "Show grid" or "Show ruler" with an on/off checkmark seems pretty reasonable to me too provided that menu items are not used as indicators (showing a status rather than providing a way to change it), and that tends to be how they are used anyway.
As a whole, they represent an "action", not a "state" (make the program do something when you click it). But the action does not have to be encoded in the text alone, hence why I think if the text refers to a feature, and the item itself is a checkmark, then the action means to turn the feature on or off depending on the checkmark state.
If you think about it - if the concept of a checkmark menu item would indeed be hard to comprehend, then it follows that checkmarks themselves would be hard to comprehend. This is clearly not the case and Apple is using checkmarks all over the place.
What is obviously (to me at least) more confusing is when you don't find stuff where it was just a second ago, and by that I mean an item with a certain text label.
Just imagine this scenario: You go into the settings of your phone and there is a button "Turn WiFi off". You'd have to mentally process, ok, this must mean it is currently on. So much easier to have the "On" state expressed visually right with the control, not the wording. Why would it be any different with menu items?
Best regards, -Stephan
