Status Messages Vs Personal Messages

[Felipe Contreras]

2008/9/12 ZeeGeek <zeegeek at gmail.com>:
> 2008/9/11 Richard Laager <rlaager at wiktel.com>
>>
>> On Thu, 2008-09-11 at 14:39 -0700, Mark Doliner wrote:
>> > And no, you don't need to
>> > click the status control to change, you just need to click in the text
>> > box then start typing.
>>
>> Felipe considers it non-intuitive to have to click a status in the
>> status selector to get the message text box to appear when you have no
>> status set currently. This is a trade-off of hiding the status box for
>> people that don't use it regularly.
>>
>> I don't think we need to change this because I believe most people
>> (especially if the status box will be keeping the status, as it now
>> does) will either always have a message or never have a message. The
>> next most common use case will be messages attached to particular saved
>> statuses. I highly doubt there are enough users who frequently go from
>> *having no message* to *typing a message* to outweigh the users who
>> never use a message.
>
> Well, this assumption might not capture the majority of the users. I myself
> sometimes leave the message empty when I don't have any particular feelings
> to express. However, every once in a while, I'd like to express something
> and then I'd really like to click and type right away, instead of having to
> click on a status (most of the time, the same status as what I'm having)
> first.
> Even for people who don't regularly use the message box, it wouldn't be much
> of a hassle to have it there. They can simply ignore it. On the other hand,
> as for now, people who regularly use it have to do extra work to get the
> message changed. So in all, having the message box will reduce the total
> work need to be done for both groups of users.

Yeap.

I would like to hear en explanation about why the buddy icon is always
there and the status message should not. My bet is that people
change/set the status message much often than the buddy icon.

-- 
Felipe Contreras