UI Redesign Continued: Requirements
October 23, 2008
OK, I’m going to do something I ought to have done in the very first post on this topic: requirements. Since some of us seem to be talking at cross-purposes, we should at least have a discussion about what we want out of this kind of display in the first place.
IMO, the requirements for redesigning the registration numbers display on the schedule page of ProCon are:
- Compactness: the display needs to be readable on the existing schedule items, which are typically at least 120 pixels wide and 100 pixels tall. Other information on the schedule item leaves about 50 pixels of vertical space for this display to use.
- Information at a glance: People need to be able to use these displays to make quick decisions during the registration rush. Can users glance quickly at this display and see:
- Which games still have room to register, and
- Of those, which games are running out of room quickly, and
- Of the full games, which ones have short waiting lists?
- Learnability: Oftentimes, people don’t have a lot of time to learn how to use these things. It should be intuitively obvious, or as close to it as possible, what the display means.
But, of course, there’s plenty of room to debate these requirements. So, people who have commented on the last few posts (and anyone else, of course): do these seem like reasonable requirements? Is there anything you’d add? Is there anything here you don’t think is necessary?
Thanks to everyone for the continued feedback, it’s been very helpful.
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2 Comments
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Unambiguous. Items should not represent different types of data where reasonable. I don’t think that’s been a problem with any model so far suggested.
Clean. This is directly tied to your point on ‘glance’. The point is not to cram every possible piece of information here, it is to give some quick oversight for informed decisions. Each game has at least one other screen/place for deeper information. This could also fall into the description of Contextual. Information should be pertinent to the tasks the schedule is intended to solve.
Not much to add; I like those requirements.
I still maintain that “How many slots are left?” and “How full is the game?” are two different questions, and that the answer to the first one is more useful to players than the answer to the second.