Using quotes or not when referring to button names in simulations

I'm with Rick.

Click OK

Press Play

Eat Pizza

Clean, simple and efficient.

Hi Francesca,

I'm with the others on this "Click OK to continue". The only rule you should always is consistancy. If you always refer to a button name in bold or in quotation marks of any type people will catch on.

A couple of additional pointers: if you're worried that your users aren't very computer savvy (like mine) put an "About this simulation" slide at the start. Use the slide to introduce the idea of on-screen buttons, and interactivity. Personally I use one type of text caption for information and another type to ask them to perform a task. Introducing these caption types as well as the idea of buttons at the start gives them a little more confidence going in, and improves their performance. It also gets around havign the talk about "the xyz button all the time"

Hope this helps

Niamh

@digitalchemist, I by and large agree with Captiv8r about the plethora of standards. In terms of a visual flow/user experience point of view, the "Click the OK button" verbiage flows the best. The single and double quotes seem superfluous since the boldface is already achieving the desired effect of drawing out button text. I would only use the quotes if you weren't boldfacing, and in that case would use double quotes. In writing and in coding single quotes are typically reserved for quotes within quotes (though again, to Captiv8r's point, you can probably find reasons to deviate from this rule of thumb).

As to Captiv8r's suggestion to only say "Click OK," that is also a context-based decision. In our simulations we explicitly say "button" in our text captions as you do because for our users, some are woefully uneducated in the ways of software and user interfaces so it makes sense to distinguish buttons from tabs, menus, text fields, etc. In a way, we're training them on a specific software application AND user interfaces in general. However, if you were writing to a tech-saavy audience then calling something a button that is obiously so could be a tad demeaning.