I have an XP that has a complicated scene in it. Within the navigation, there is a button with a question mark that the user can hit that will show quickly what each section on the scene does. I have multiple actions attached to the trigger of pressing the “?” button. The problem is that I also have in the “instructions” section an exit button. In testing, I’ve noticed that if I exit out of the instructions before all of the actions have finished, then hit “?” again, the actions will start over… on top of the actions that are finishing up.
So I was wondering- is there a trigger/action that would cancel/abort the actions in the “?” button that haven’t played when the “exit” button is pressed?
I hope this makes sense. I can make a video demonstration of what I mean/the problem area if that would help you to understand what exactly I’m having a problem with.
You can disable the “?” Button as the first action in the trigger, then enable it in the last action.
This will keep the users from being able to click on it.
Also, If I understood it correctly, you have the same instructions in both the Exit and the “?” button. If that is correct, you could place the instructions in one button, then have the Exit and “?” trigger the instructions button.
Again just disable the instructions button so it cannot be triggered while processing.
When the animation is finished uncheck the toggle button thus allowing when the button is pressed again even if the animations are in the process it will default back to the start to start the animation like you have setup the positioning in the triggers and actions.
Also you could create a trigger so when button > is tapped > moved z index of “Asset” to the front.
@megan This is a good question for the community since many people run into this eventually. As you can see, the issue can be approached different ways - some design related, and some function-related.
For example, sometimes a good UX design involves controlling the users ability to navigate. You may want to keep the exit button hidden or disabled for a short time to ensure the animations finish. And/Or shorten the duration of your animations so they will for sure finish by the time someone could ever press the ? again. Or looking at the menu from a different angle to see if there’s any other way to lead the customer through that particular help menu. Maybe even adding multiple ?'s so there’s less happening at once.
Functionally, there’s no cancel button when an animation has started. I think this would actually be a nice feature to add, and it may have already been requested…to ‘stop’ all concurrent actions from a single asset immediately.
However, and @Seb may need to back me up on this, I’m pretty sure if something is in the middle of it’s action, you can make it stop by invoking another action upon with the same property. For example, if I have something ‘blinking’ with a never ending opacity animation (from 0 opacity to 100), I can use a button to set the opacity to Zero, which will stop the blinking because my new action now takes priority. So maybe there’s a way you can use this knowledge to your advantage. If you absolutely need the exit button to be showing and active at all times, try triggering all your animated items to immediately go back to their beginning state. That way it will stop the actions in motion, and have them ready for the user to press the ? again.
I hope there’s some good info for you from everyone in this post! Good Luck!
Thanks everyone for your help! I’ve been at a shoot all day today and haven’t had time to implement any of your pieces of advice. I’ll keep you updated as to how the project is progressing.
Don’t hesitate to add some screenshots of your experience in your next questions. I really think it helps to understand what’s going / what you guys are trying to do
@AlexB: you’re right about actions that stop a previous action, although I wouldn’t rely on it if I can avoid such a situation by design
@Seb: I’ve learned my lesson, and will attach sceenshots from now on.
I suppose this may be veering off topic, but when it comes to good UX design, is there a good book/web course for those of us (read: ME!!) who are new to UX design? I’ve been taking some Lynda.com courses in UX theory, but sometimes it feels like gobbeldy-gook, and I don’t know how to use it in a practical manner. I know some of this just takes time and practice to get better, but if you have any suggestions on material that will help me accelerate my UX design skills, I’d be grateful! Thanks!
(some are more technical, some are more web-oriented, but this is my short list based on what I used to do)
Also, I could share tons of site links but from my experience, over the years, the one I ended up on most of the time when doing some research is https://www.nngroup.com/ (Don Norman & Jakob Nielsen).
About books, A Book Apart has some very interesting ones, it depends what you want, go theoretical or technical. My favorite being “Design is a job” by Mike Monteiro which is a bible when you plan to work into design.
Also, one big classical that comes to my mind is “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman.
Finally, from my pov I’d say that what I learned about UX over the years, I learned it from users and testing, on the field, more than any book I’ve read
Thanks @Alex! I’m going to have to check those out. I live in a smaller city that doesn’t have anyone who does this type of design (that I know of… maybe they do it in secret, like Batman??) that I can go to with these types of questions, so I’m grateful to have this community that shares their wealth of knowledge so freely.
@Alex Great resources, I’m going to check those out too!
@megan, You will learn a lot by watching a non-techy person touch through the display. The more you read and observe, the better you become. And keep in mind that nothing will match exactly to your situation, and designing for large/small touch screens can be different than web design, app design, or regular saas software.
@AlexB Thanks! I’ve got a video editing background, so a lot of this is new to me. But the storytelling/conveying info skill set has transferred pretty well. It’s just the “how do I implement that best” that sometimes gets me.
