This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: Status Bar noticeability Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

Panopticon Central has some interesting points on what people notice in a UI. Specifically, the status bar:

But what this really makes me think of is a usability test they did on Access one day to see how effective text placed in the status bar was. The test went like this: the user was given some task to do in Access. Unbeknownst to them, we'd stuck a message in the status bar that read "If you notice this message and tell the usability lead, we will give you $15." Want to guess how many people got the $15? Zero. After that, we were careful not to put any important information down in the status bar, because it was 100% likely that no one would ever see it.

Combine that with the research showing that people often just hit return to any dialog box, and you have a real issue. I guess any user notification that's important just has to be part of the core UI.