Pauric, perhaps all our difficulty is about terminology. I am actually talking about a stage indicator, but for some reason the term didn't come to mind when I was first posting. Apologies for the confusion! It is a web app, so there is no concept of subroutine processing, etc. They walk through different pages with forms, and work their way to the end of the process. I want them to understand what step they and on, and how many more steps they have to complete before they accomplish their goal.
It's exactly like Amazon, except pretend that in certain circumstances, from the "Shipping & Payment" step, you might need to launch into another 3 step process before you're able to get to the Gift Wrap step. Unfortunately I'm so far down the path that I can't really get away from the stage indicator at this point, and due to other requirements I can't change the indicator into an active navigation item, so I am probably stuck with a variation of what I have right now. I appreciate all your thoughts though -- they've definitely made me think! Meredith > -----Original Message----- > From: pauric [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 2:46 PM > To: Meredith Noble > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] nested, multi-step progress bars > > I didnt read your description carefully.. apologies. Point taken on > the labels, Amazon is an excellent example > > I guess this boils down to my belief that progress meters are an > illusion. A little trick designers can employ to comfort users in to > thinking things aren't stuck. Borne out of the flaws of slow systems > - where user's needed feedback. > > I do see a fundamental difference between a 'progress bar' (extreme > example - but fundamentally this is what they are) > http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex11/xpprogressbar.htm > and a stage indicator > http://www.webreference.com/programming/xul/amazon.png > > I didnt realize before that your process can be stopped and picked up > over a number of days. In that case I'd point towards some of the Tax > applications (TaxAct, Turbo tax etc). I dont believe they use > progress meters - stand to be corrected on that. > > If this was a straight forward flow I'd buy the requirement. But I > still have the question - why would users need a graphic to indicate > 'progress' when the user is the dependency in terms of the time they > spend in your flows and the subroutines they may (or may not) choose. > > Again, I may (hell.. probably) have misunderstood things but it sounds > like you need a navigation system that indicates the stages. I have > in the past used a series of tabbed mini wizards... my aprroach here > would be to build the 'progress' in to the navigation. > > regards- pauric > ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
