At 10/22/03 5:47 PM, Roger B.A. Klorese wrote:
>>If you want examples of what the rest of us experience.... How about the
>>fact that "View Pending Orders" requires scrolling down a screen, past
>>such frequently used items as "Place Multilingual Bulk Order Manually"?
>
>I never work on a screen less than 1024 in height -- they're both always
>on screen for me.
But people working smaller screens aren't so lucky, unfortunately. Also,
the more TLDs you're authorized to sell, the more stuff appears at the
top; for example, if you sell .ca domains, an extra 6 lines appear at the
top. "View Pending Orders" requires scrolling on my 1024 x 768 screen.
Even if it doesn't require scrolling on your screen, it makes sense to
put things more frequently used near the top. For example, if you sell a
few TLDs, I'd guess "View Domain" appears below the fold even on your
screen; that's an obvious candidate for never requiring scrolling.
>>Or that
>>the "Process Renewals Immediately" setting is located right where you'd
>>expect to find it, in the "Tech Contact Information" section?
>>
>
>That's a problem exactly once... since I never have any need to change it.
I'm sensing a trend here :-)
Anyway, people who DO need to change it and can't find it after several
minutes of searching -- perhaps in a panicked response to a bunch of
fraudulent renewals going through that they want to start reviewing --
are likely to feel that even once is too many.
>>Or that
>>there's no single search screen you can use to search for a domain name
>>in any possible state?
>>
>
>When I'm searching for domains, "View Domain" has never failed to bring
>up what I need -- what cases are you talking about?
That only shows active domains ("completed orders"). It doesn't show
pending orders, transfers in progress, or declined transfers, for
example. If you want to view those, you have to go a separate screen for
each.
In addition to "View Domain", I count seven separate search screens
scattered throughout the RWI: "Search Reg System Orders", "Search
Declined Orders", "Search Batch Transfers", "Search Domains", "Search for
domains set to auto-renew", "Search for domains set to let-expire", and
"Search Away Transfers". If you only remember a partial name and you
aren't sure whether an incoming transfer has completed, for example, you
might have to try "Search Domains", "Search Declined Orders", and "Search
Reg System Orders" to find it.
All of these search screens could be combined into a single screen,
together with some other links from the RWI such as the "show domains
expiring in the next X days" family, collapsing a dozen separate options
into one.
>Considering the flat-out badness I've seen in other UIs -- like any
>given operation taking 5 to 7 separate page submits -- this one seems
>like a dream to me.
Yeah, I'd certainly agree that I've seen much worse, and this stuff is
hard to do right; I have spent far too much of my life working on UI
designs for software and Web screens that I later threw out with a "what
was I THINKING!?".
Still, that doesn't make this one *good*....
--
Robert L Mathews, Tiger Technologies http://www.tigertech.net/
