Re: Workrave and XP magnifier. (fwd)

[Hugh Sasse]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Kees-Jan Dijkzeul wrote:

> Hi Hugh,
>
> Workrave is a program designed to prevent RSI. It tries to do so by
> periodically popping up windows suggesting the user to take a break. Depending
> on how it is configured, it can become pretty insistent. Some (if not most)

Yes, seemed to be every couple of minutes, which is not the
recommendations I'd heard of about RSI.  More like quarter of an
hour, but it's not an area I know a lot about.

> people are very annoyed by Workrave's continuus popups, leading to elevated
> stress levels, which, eventually, leads to RSI. For them, Workrave is

I definitely felt stressed by this, especially as it seemed to be
deliberately preventing use with the magnifier.  The only program I
ever heard of before that ran away from the mouse was a tasteless
joke program which presented a dialogue asking if one of your organs
was large, and the "Yes" button would run away from the mouse, so
you could only click "No".

I thought someone had finally come up with this program mentioned on
this news parody site

http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2008/12/11/microsoft-launches-concentration-breaker-30/

:-)

> counterproductive.
>
> Hence, I strongly believe that workrave should only be used by people who
> consciously decide they want to.  You sound like workrave was forced upon you,
> which is, in my opinion, a bad idea. If support people come over to help me

Yes, especially given its lack of accessibility.

> with my machine, I make it a point to disable workrave for them before handing
> over mouse and/or keyboard.

The user of this machine didn't know it was on there.  It only
showed up for a login as Administrator.
>
> Lots of thought has gone into workrave usability already. Overall, we are
> aiming to be as unobtrusive as possible. This is why windows "jump away" when
> you hover the mouse over them: The assumption is that you want to click
> something that is underneath. For the same reason, keyboard shortcuts are

Yes, but it can't assume everyone's intention at all times.  It
should be possible to do something else, like the break window not
having focus, or the prelude window moving away from the mouse at
half the speed of the mouse so you can push the window around but
catch up with it if you need to.  I don't do enough GUI programming
to know about what is possible.
The break window could be other than an all-or-nothing device, I can
imagine it interposing delays to slow down the users interaction
significantly during breaks, so interaction to tell it to go away or
whatever is possible.

> disabled on break windows: If a break window pops up while you are typing, you
> do not want your keystrokes to result in buttons being pressed.

If it doesn't have focus then that should not happen, I think.  I
don't know if windows will let you have a window come up without
focus at all.

>
> To make a long story shorter: Although much effort has been invested in
> usability already, though the focus is on "normal" people, and not the
> visually- or otherwise-impaired.

It is designed for people with RSI.  This is a community with its
own accessibility problems, the need for split keyboards with a
non-rectangular layout, a need for trackballs instead of mice, a
need for speech recognition instead of keyboards, etc.
Accessibility issues, and the fact that they are different for
different people should be fairly high on the list of priorities in
such a context, I would think.  However, even RNIB, and RNID tended
to push the needs of deafblind people onto the other organization
(when I last looked), so I am aware of the limitations of
understanding in the disability field.  [I compiled the FAQ for the
DEAFBLND list]

>
> So far, I don't think I've been much help (thanks for following along till

You've given some context.

> here). I'm not sure where to go from here. For visually impaired people that
> decide to use workrave, I'm a bit unsure where the major usability issues are.

They will differ from person to person, but preventing the use of
magnification software is a serious problem: All magnifiers can only
display part of the screen at a time, and are thus controlled by the
mouse, and text cursor.  Having windows avoid the mouse means they
cannot be magnified.

> Workrave's popup windows always show the same content, so a regular user will

But I can't see what it is, and I can't tell if that same content,
like how long the pre-warning is, can be affected by something I
configure.

> not want to read them anyway, just be aware that they are there, so they can
> decide to take a break. To support this mode, there are sound events that
> depend on the popup being shown, so you could know what workrave is doing even
> with your eyes closed. Like I said, I'm not sure where to improve.

More choices would be good.  Maybe speech alerts using SAPI 4 or
SAPI 5.  Some tools just change the colour of the system tray icon.

>
> You sound like a user who is confronted with workrave without being familiar
> with it. This is a difficult situation to work from, since it is workrave's

This will happen when someone comes to help a user with it on their
machine.  When I had LunarPlus someone tried to use my machine, but
couldn't cope with the enlarged screen scrolling about. I didn't
expect them to access the machine when I was not there, or I'd have
turned magnification off.

> job to annoy you. I could tell you how to get workrave out of your way (locate

If I could have found its name, seeing no controls to stop it, I'd
have used Add/Remove programs to deal with it.  Unsubtle but
effective!

> the sheep icon in the system tray, right click it, and then choose "Quit" or

Didn't know it was there in the system tray, until someone showed me.

> "Mode->Suspended"), but I don't know how to improve usability here, without
> making things worse for our regular users.

Put the same sheep icon in the popup windows, so people recognize it?
Tell people to look in the system tray?
Making the name of the program more prominent, so information can be
found about it.

>
> I absolutely see the problem. It is just that many of the things you mention
> are so by design (except maybe the non-resizable status window and obviously
> the sorely lacking documentation).
>
> Sorry I couldn't be more help. Maybe anyone else has suggestions?

It will take some time to figure out a good strategy, because the
need not to be interrupted is in direct conflict with the need to
be interrrupted. :-)
>
> Groetjes,
>
> Kees-Jan
>
        Thank you
        Hugh

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