I am neck deep in a project that has two goals. 1. to re-design an existing web based reporting / management application so that it is more intuitive and better adheres to the users¹ mental model (it¹s currently as intuitive as a DOS prompt...) 2. take our existing windows application (responsible for managing configurations of remote kiosks), and bring it online, merging it with the above product, thereby creating an online configuration and management application.
I have worked out the reporting side by creating a dashboard style interface that allows the kiosks to be displayed on a map (since they are distributed geographically) and permits the user to easily see the status of the units by hovering over them (the icons are also colour coded in order to visually indicate status). They can also drill down into the machine details if needed from within that context. There is also a formal reporting module that will allow for generation of pdfs etc to be used in reports or other applications. My trouble comes when I look to bring the configuration of these kiosks online. The kiosks require configuration of both hardware elements as well as software parameters. Since a single customer could have one unit, or hundreds, I questioning my design in terms of scalability. The concept that I am working with now involves a user being supplied with a list of kiosks (managed by us, the user cannot add or remove kiosks from the list for licensing purposes) and then ³applying² settings to the individuals in the list. The issue at hand comes from the constraint that a customer could have kiosks with different hardware / software configurations (a single kiosk has a single instance of hardware and software parameters, but the customer could have several different kiosk combinations out in the wild). To this end, I designed a solution that allows the customer to build different hardware ³profiles² and different software ³settings². To apply these elements to kiosks, they would simply drag and drop the different profiles and settings onto the kiosk name in the list. I am working with the concept of drag and drop because our users are not necessarily computer literate beyond playing solitaire (which uses the drag and drop metaphor). This seems to work well for a small amount of kiosks but what if there were 500? I have added the ability to ³group² the kiosks and enabled drag and drop onto the group to address this. Is there a better way to manage hardware and software profiles of potentially hundreds of kiosks with differing configurations? Am I worrying about something that just ³has to be that way² because there are a lot of options. Is the drag and drop concept the most intuitive approach? Cheers, Rob ________________________________________________________________ *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
