Navigating AirSet

So after reading Pat's reply, I went home and asked SWMBO and one female offspring how they felt about AirSet. These people use AirSet regularly--almost daily. I was surprised at the strong feelings they expressed. SWMBO said she "hated" it and female offspring said she "mostly agreed" with SWMBO--just not as vehemently.

I asked them if they found Outlook difficult to navigate and both agreed that they did not have trouble with Outlook. So, I asked what was different. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! That was the sound of the dump truck backing up as it prepared to unload. Here are a few of the complaints and suggestions--at least the ones I can remember. :)

I have placed shortcuts to the various applications on each desktop of each cloud computer. They don't like having to double click the icons to open the application. The thought is make it a single click and "quit trying to pretend it is a desktop when it is not." So they want a single click to open the applications. I pointed out the short cuts menu and they made loud gagging noises while pointing their index fingers down their throats. I took that to be a negative sign and asked them to explain. They did.

First, short cuts should be drag and drop like it is in Windows. Drag the icon over to the shortcut bar and voila! There it lives. They don't want a star icon that makes no connection to short cuts in their mind. The software should make sense and star icons don't mean short cuts to them.

Secondly, the shortcuts are too difficult to arrange. Click on the star, click on manage short cuts, click on move to move a short cut up or down one short cut at a time to get them in some kind of semblance of order. They want drag and drop to move short cuts around.

I pointed out the help tip for short cuts that says: Set the Auto Launch option to automatically create a button in the task bar when you visit that Cloud Computer. They were somewhat mollified, but not enough to lower the dump bed on that dump truck, so we kept going. (A note to AirSet staff--maybe this setting could be managed globally by an administrator so that these icons would be on the task bar, but they could be removed or over ridden by each individual user--just a thought.)

Female offspring became very animated about "hating to have to click back and forth to navigate to various months." She wants a drop down menu from somewhere near the top that lets you select the year and the month rather than clicking through 4 or 5 months to get where you are going. The minical helps, but it is not what she wants. A drop down menu with about 5 years (2 back and three in front of the current year), which when you hover over the year give a hierarchical menu from which she can then select the appropriate month.

That comment reminded SWMBO of her primary pet peeve and she went into orbit. "I hate," she said, "having to click on the top to choose a computer (from a menu) and then having to click on the bottom to choose an application on that computer." I mentioned short cuts and immediately cringed as she took off again. "Short cuts?!? I'll give you a short cut! How about a hierarchical drop down menu from the top that lists all of my cloud computers? A menu that when I hover over that cloud computer gives me an adjacent drop down menu with all of the applications available in that computer." I asked about how far should it go with these drop down menus. "As far as possible," she said, laying her fork down, leaning forward and making direct eye contact for emphasis. I looked down as she continued. "The menu should list all of the applications specific to that cloud computer, and should list any other necessary information that I might need, such as a "Help" menu item. Hovering over help should give me access to the user guide with a sub-menu for each application or area of help listed in the guide, a link to to help forums, help videos, and a link to contact AirSet via email." I nodded amicably. She seemed to be winding down.

"I don't have time to learn a whole new way of doing things," she said. "Make this software work for me instead of me working for it."

Then she remembered about AirSet Connector. "It doesn't recognize near enough data. I can highlight text that includes dates and times and notes, and it just keeps everything in the first field. I end up having to type most of the data into the correct field after I have used the connector. What good is a notes section on the connector pop up if the software doesn't know what to place in that section?" I took this to be a rhetorical question and wisely kept quiet.

SWMBO and female offspring suddenly remembered that they had school supplies to purchase and began clearing the table in preparation to leave. I gave vent to a pent up sigh of relief.

The house is now quiet as it is just me, the cat, and my wounded ego. The later being a bit raw from the bruising it took from the beating administered to one of my favorite web applications.

So, what do you say? I think their ideas have merit. I know it would be more intuitive to have drop down menus with sub-menus that automatically open when you hover over a menu item.

Thanks for listening,

Jim