I’m Calling You Out
Trend: Functional Callouts and Tooltips
One of the biggest challenges a UI Designer can face on a daily basis is balancing Information Density. The big problem is fitting the right amount of necessary information to make the UI effective without making the interface visually cumbersome.
One simple solution to the information density problem that doesn’t require removing functionality or adding complex navigation is using Functional Callouts. Callouts (or tooltips, captions, balloons… whatever you want to call it) aren’t a new invention by any means, but adding actionable items and rich media to a callout is a relatively new trend. And this isn’t quite the same as a Designed Tooltip, in that Functional Callouts can provide the user with added navigation and/or related items.
The main drawback is that putting actions in a callout can result in hiding valuable functionality from the user.
The most widely used example of these types of UI components has to be Google Maps:
Also, certain software frameworks like Flex and Prototip are making it easy to add advanced functionality to their respective callouts and tooltips.
References:
Google Maps: http://maps.google.com
Flex Store Example: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/samples/fig_callout/
Prototips 2: http://www.nickstakenburg.com/projects/prototip2/
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Vote on this trend:
+7 (9 votes)
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Tags: balloons, callouts, flex, functional callouts, google maps, information density, prototip, tooltips, uitrend
- Categories: Trends
Allan
Sep 18, 2009
10:02 am
An interesting consideration is what input is required from the user to trigger the “call out” to appear. Is it just mouse enter? Does it require a click?
What about dismissing the call out? Is mouse leave sufficient? Escape key? I have been sorely irritated by inadvertently bringing up call outs and having to figure out how to get rid of them. This breaks the stride of my workflow.
And finally, does the call out introduce modality? It is really annoying to have a call out show up and it introduces a modal state so that the user *MUST* interact with it explicitly in order to continue past it into the rest of the application.
Ron Norman
Sep 18, 2009
1:58 pm
I think in most cases, the call out requires a click to display (if it has added functionality that is). And in that respect, there is usually an “exit” button for dismissing, and SOMETIMES the esc key works. But it definitely depends on the person implementing the component.
I haven’t come across any modal callouts… I agree, that would be VERY annoying.