Another UI enhancement proposal

[Matt Ryan]

Hi, folks --

I am trying to see if there is a way to improve the page you land on
when you select a site in the admin interface. My goals are:

1. Improved ease-of-use. The page right now feels cluttered and hard
to visually scan.
2. Direct access to adding and borrowing

Here is what I have come up with:
http://apps.carleton.edu/reason_package/reason_4.0/www/images/592190.png

The idea is that when you mouse over the row for a given type, three
action buttons appear, providing the ability to add and go into
borrowing mode directly from this page:
http://apps.carleton.edu/reason_package/reason_4.0/www/images/592188.png

I'd appreciate any feedback you might have regarding this idea --

Thanks,
Matt

[Matt Rose]

Matt,

I think this idea is great! The interface looks much cleaner and
easier to use. One usability question though; is there any added
benefit to making the buttons appear on a mouse over instead of always
being displayed?

Thanks for all your great work on the interface changes recently!

~Matt

[Matt Ryan]

Thanks. Regarding your question, an earlier version of the design
visibly repeated the buttons under each type. I felt that design was a
bit overwhelming, with lots of buttons labeled the with the same text
repeated down the page (particularly if the site has a bunch of
types.) So the buttons-revealed-on-hover stuff came as an attempt to
reduce apparent redundancy.

http://apps.carleton.edu/reason_package/reason_4.0/www/images/592351.gif

Matt

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[Melissa Dix]

I agree Matt. I think that it is a bit overwhelming. But I love the mouseover idea and I think all these new changes are great!

We've done an upgrade on our test server that includes the icons. We were planning to do it on the live server before break, but now we're thinking about holding off. Since we're still so heavy in the training process, we don't want to upgrade to too many changes and frustrate the folks that are working on our training documentation, or the people that have already completed training.

Melissa

--
Melissa Dix
Assistant Director of ISR: Web Services
Beloit College
http://www.beloit.edu

608-363-2488

[Charles Fulton]

The mouseover looks preferable and I'm looking forward to playing
around with it. We're upgrading our production server to use the icons
next week so that it's in place for Winter quarter.

Charles

[Matt Ryan]

Hi, everyone --

I have to apologize for not being as clear about the progress of UI
changes as I probably should have been.

Steve at Luther was planning on holding off and waiting for the more
tabular-looking design with mouseovers. However, as I've been
interacting with the design in my development instance of Reason I'm
feeling more and more that there is something "off" about it. I can't
quite put my finger on it, but it just doesn't seem to be working.
Mostly it seems kind of scattered -- I'm not sure where to look or
click first, I don't use the browse/add/borrow buttons, and the
recently edited items are, paradoxically, harder to recognize and deal
with.

Because I'm concerned that this proposal is in fact a step backwards
in terms of usability, I'd really like to go back to square one with
the design of that interface.

Over the next few weeks I will experiment with other alternatives for
how that interface might work. I'd love to hear other people's ideas
or suggestions. If you want to try your hand at a mockup, please send
it my way. However, things at Carleton are pretty busy, and I don't
know how much time I will get to work on it, so I really can't promise
any timeframe. It could be that the best interface idea will require
more sophisticated plumbing and will take longer to implement.

I know that could leave some of you feeling like they waited for
something that won't be coming after all, but I want to make sure that
any design we do implement for that page is robust and can hold up for
a while without needing to be scrapped.

In the meantime, I'd recommend updating to the current version of
Reason, and using its current interface (with icons and borrowing
tabs, but otherwise similar to previous interfaces.) In fact, I think
there is something to be said for incremental change to interfaces, as
users only have to assimilate smaller, more easily understood changes
rather than radical swings.

Again, sorry for not communicating better about where things stood
with this proposal.

Matt