[2.0 / Quality] Ghost cursor: Rework quality selection

[vadcx]

Related: Add quality selection to Factoriopedia

TLDR 1: Too many clicks to select ghost cursor item.
Edit: Same as the larger thread at viewtopic.php?f=6&t=117528

TLDR 2: There's no quality stats preview at all.

(1) You must press E to confirm now

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think in Factorio 1.x the ghost selection would've worked like this:
1. Open map and then inventory for ghost cursor selection
2. Click on an item, the menu auto-closes and your cursor is set to this item

Factorio 2.0 with quality mod (Space Age):
1. Open map and then inventory for ghost cursor selection
2. Click on an item, it's the selected item within the menu now. The menu remains open
3. Now you have the option to choose quality (or leave default Normal)
4. Press E to confirm the selection and close the menu

So the interaction with the menu went from one action (click item) to at least two actions (click item & press E). It's burdensome to me and this suggestion would allow to eliminate this step too if you choose to.

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(2) No stats preview

Second, there's no stats preview for different quality items, because quality selection doesn't change preview of items. It's only a drop down menu. Let's observe the worst case interaction:

1. Open ghost cursor selection menu
2. Click item
3. Click on drop down menu
4. Select quality
5. Press E

Actually 5 distinct steps (key presses).

Suggestion for (2)

Place quality selection as 5 distinct item boxes at the bottom. Once an item is selected, it shows all quality previews below. No quality is preselected to keep the flow but eliminate the drop-down menu click from (2.3)

Flow:
1. Open ghost cursor selection menu
2. Click item
3. Select Rare quality
4. Press E

The quality preview is useful to examine the stats improvements and whether you really need a higher quality item.

Concept images

none-selected.jpg (61.42 KiB) Viewed 781 times

ghost-preselected.jpg (64.53 KiB) Viewed 781 times

Additionally, selecting a quality COULD also change all items' qualities in the inventory selection.
Consider the difference between
a) compare different qualities of a single crafter (below the inventory listing)
b) compare Rare quality of different crafters (inventory items change their quality too)

all items preview quality

ghost-preselected-all-items.jpg (49.99 KiB) Viewed 781 times

Suggestion for (1)

Following this idea, always preselect the Normal quality. Auto-close menu when an item was clicked. No previews or item examinations are possible, but the hot use-case path is as quick as before. (Optionally: don't auto-close menu on right/middle/shift click and allow previews)

Flow with Normal quality:
1. Open ghost cursor selection menu
2. Click item (menu auto-closes)

Flow with desired quality:
1. Open ghost cursor selection menu
2. Select Rare quality
3. Click item (menu auto-closes)

Ideally in this case the Quality selection bar would be ABOVE the items listing to force the user to execute the actions in this order.

At the very least, getting rid of the drop-down box would eliminate one mouse click and a lot of mental delay where you wait for the drop-down to appear to select an entry.

[vadcx]

A note on "saving previous state". This is largely derived from ideas explained by Jef Raskin in The Humane Interface. He called it "Mode" but in today's lingo we may call it "state / stateful". TLDR => The less logical state a user must remember, the better. This approach (statelessness aka "modelessness") allows automatisms, without needing to remember what came before.

1. Decent option: Always default to Normal. More clicking, but at least you expect it.
2. Bad option: Try to remember last used quality, but the memory is inconsistent between different types of GUI windows.
3. 50-50 option: Remember last used quality, but the memory slots are logically separated between GUI window types. For example, in an upgrade planner the FROM column remembers a different quality than the TO column.
   Why did I call this 50-50? If the logic is not transparent or is hard to grasp, this will confuse the user and prevent learning automatisms.
4. Simple, yet very good option: the last used quality is remembered GLOBALLY between all windows that allow quality selection. This would allow the user to adapt to the last used setting, like when filling out columns in upgrade planners.
   Example: make an upgrade planner for all inserters to upgrade from Normal to Uncommon. The fastest approach with least clicking is:
   • Select each inserter type as Normal on the left
   • Select each inserter type as Uncommon on the right
   In this example you must only switch the selected quality once.