QuickTip: Label the not-so-obvious, giving some kind of indicator what it is with help text and or a label.
Metroblogging is a great site — localized blogs in 54 cities around the world, and they have a map that shows where the cities are. It would be great if i actually knew what the cities were if I hovered over them.
That’s really easy to fix: just add a label next to the city ball, and this would become a much, more usable Flash map.
Even with icons, there should always be some kind of label that indicates what the item is. Users don’t want to have to guess what it is, and even obvious items like folder items aren’t so obvious.
Patrick Neeman is Director of User Experience at Jobvite, a social recruiting platform and runs both the UX Drinking Game and Startup Drinking Game | More | Contact
If you're a UX Designer in San Francisco, ping me at Twitter. I want to add you to a list I have there.
