Talk:Places:User Interface/Tagging a Page

tags selection interaction

Whoa there horsey. I was with you right up to the end when I saw the check boxes. If I'm tagging a page I want it to be quick and painless. I want to clumsily click the tags I see and move on. The final screen indicates that I have to click those little check boxes. I'd much rather click the big ole word than the check box.

It's possible the thinking is that simply clicking the word will check the box, but the UI doesn't indicate this. One thing that may help is by highlighting on mouse hover. This will give the user the indication that something will happen now that the cursor is over the tag.

If there were a different and more universally recognizable way of indicating that an item is selected I would suggest it (though none come to mind immediately). For instance, getting rid of the checkbox and making the tags depressed like buttons (when selected) would eliminate the thinking that the user needs to click on the small area of the checkbox as well as indicate which has been selected and not selected. However, I don't know if it would be readily apparent to most users what is going on in the list (because of a lack of familiarity with the concept).

addendum: Slightly greying or somehow altering the background of the tag will also be helpful at indicating it's selected state. This will make the at-a-glance assessment easier.

page title edition

I'm not about the way you envision the tagging, but it would seems convenient to be ablle to edit the title of the page in case it's not relevant with the content of the page or won't allow you to refind the page later.

non modal UI element

If you ever allow edition of title or of a free form description field, then you need a UI element which is not modal to allow some copy/paste between the current page and the tagging form. It may also be true for the tagging if you want to use a specific word you're not familiar with and you'd rather copy/paste to avoid spelling mistakes.