Usability - Minimum Mouse Clicks vs Optimal Mouse Clicks
Generally I feel that deciding goals like “minimum mouse clicks” or “optimal mouse clicks” relates to the user base. Novice and Experts. Adhering strictly to minimum mouse clicks may sometime back-fire, when the intended users are beginners or novices. Here is my theory about when to opt Minimum mouse clicks / optimum mouse clicks.
In Navigation: When do you navigate? To reach a particular destination. In software, you navigate to reach a particular screen / user interface. A long or time-consuming navigation irritates the user. Critical applications like network monitoring apps, helpdesk apps or security apps should feature navigation which helps the user to reach any user interface within a few clicks. So for navigation you should set the goal for minimum clicks.
In Tasks : Doing a task involves little care, so that you can avoid mistakes or confusions. You can find some User interfaces which throws all options and information in a single page claiming that it is “usable” or adheres to usability. It is agreeable, for experts. But for novices? No they will feel they are bombarded or they will get scared looking at so much settings/options/information within a single page.
Performing a task should have two type of navigations. Expert mode and Novice mode.
In expert mode, all options/settings/information can be dumped in single page/user interface. Because experts are experts.. they hate wasting time navigating through pages.
In Novice mode, the options should be categorized and presented in a few screens/user interface which is generally called as “Wizard” UI. New users always love if they get some help when doing the tasks. Wizard UIs help in such cases. So to perform tasks, opt for the Optimal mouse click goal for novice mode, and opt for the Minimum mouse click goal for expert mode .