Topic on Talk:MoodBar/Design

Once a user has selected an emotion, are they allowed to change their selection? Direct manipulation interfaces such as this benefit greatly from allowing users to explore the features, so if not, I would recommend that they should be.

If indeed they should be, the gray and flat state of the emoticons that were not selected makes them look disabled. This would indicate to the user that their decision is final. Flattening a control's is commonly an indication of it being disabled. Additionally fading a control out (in this case lightening it) also is common in indicating it is disabled.

I would recommend not changing the non-selected emoticons, and providing a more distinctive selected state to compensate for the loss in contrast. Since color is a fairly short visual variable, something like size may be useful - such that the selected emoticon would appear larger when selected. You could also use an additional graphical element such as an outline to modify the shape of the selected item - shape is infinitely long visual variable so it's a good fit here.

This post was posted by Trevor Parscal (WMF), but signed as Trevor Parscal.

The user can, indeed, change their mind.

I'm not so concerned about this, to be honest. Of course, when playing with the tool, it all seems obvious to me but then I designed the thing.

Size changing is an interesting idea, though. I had explored using shapes to indicate selection but it ran into the "White Smiley on a Dark Background" problem so aborted exploration into that area.

Moodbar is still def. a work in progress. If we ever get resources devoted to it again, this might be something to play with.

Though, if we revisit anything, I'd prefer to come up with a simple icon that can be resized to 16x16, monochrome, that we can use to indicate a "Moodbar active" element. This falls into a plan to attach "mood" to specific items (like warning templates, or tools, or whatever) so we can track attitude towards unique targets rather than "overall impressions."