I am writing documentation for a software program. To open a document, it must be double clicked.
Considering readers skimming through the screenshots only and not reading the text, how to design the double click action so that it is understood intuitively?
If possible, this should be inline with a single click, which I also need to indicate.
So far I came up with a pixel arrow and a single circle vs. double circle. Is that clear enough, also if the reader sees one of them only? If yes, why is it good enough? If not, what could be enhanced and why?
The green color used here is one of the CI/CD colors for highlighting.
Update
Thanks for the feedback so far. Based on the answers and comments, I have compiled a number of options and collected a bit of (subjective) feedback. Since I need to consider people printing the documentation, I also need to look at the black and white version. Proposal no. 5 with the additional
xwas IMHO best received.
Answer
This is the exact way that Luke Wroblewski indicated single tap and double tap with his gesture icons:
These have become de-facto standards in UX wireframes, but can’t say if they’d be intuitive to your users of your software.
The catch is that a double-click, itself, isn’t an intuitive action to begin with. It’s a learned interaction. That said, those that learn the difference between single and double clicks would likely infer from your two icons the different actions.
As Jooja emphasizes below, a key factor in understanding the difference between the two icons is that you see both icons. That may not always be the case. As such, I’d suggest adding a secondary modifier to the double click icon to indicate that it is 2 clicks. Example:
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Thomas Weller , Answer Author : DA01