Is assignment an issue or displaying list items?

 

For your display - Did you consider showing selections the other way around; 
small lists to include large lists? In your example it would be

 

B1 - A1, A2, A4, A6 - A28

B2 - A3, A4, A6 - A28, A30 - A49

B3 - A30 - A49, A51, A 52

.....and so on

 

Here are two examples on assigning items:

 

Solution 1: not the best of the lot, but makes selection easier (cherry picking 
items). Tedious as you have to make multiple selections from a huge list quite 
a few times.

 



 

Solution 2: Makes selection a lot easier, users can manually type in List A 
items for each List B item; similar to printing pages in a Word doc (printer 
settings). If you are concerned about typos etc, you can also provide a feature 
that will allow users to cherry pick items (list selection box).

 



 

Thanks,

Amit

 

-----Original Message-----
From: IxDA Digest [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 5:10 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [IxDA Digest] assigning multiple items to multiple items

 

Six comments by Michael Tuminello, et al... 

Started September 8th at 12:44pm

 

View the thread online:

http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=32756

 

Comments in this digest:

       1. Michael Tuminello - Hi - I'm looking for a way to assign a small...

       2. Hugh Griffith - Hi Michael, I'm not sure I completely...

       3. Michael Tuminello - wow - thanks everyone for your responses. I...

       4. Eric Scheid - How about something a little more...

       5. Michael Tuminello - what's more interactive than a checkbox? ;-)...

       6. Eric Scheid - In Russia, checkbox click you! e. ...

 

Note: To subscribe to followup digests for this particular thread, 

reply with the word 'follow' in the body of your e-mail.

 

 

 

I x D A   D I G E S T 

 

assigning multiple items to multiple items

Started September 8th at 12:44pm

 

 

1.  Michael Tuminello - Monday, 12:44pm

 

Hi -

 

I'm looking for a way to assign a small number of multiple items (say 

1-5) to a large number of multiple items (say 150).

 

So I might want to assign small list items 1 to big list items 1-50, 

small list items 2 and 3 to big items 51-100 and small list items 1 

and 2 to big list items 101-150. Then you can ostensibly go back and 

select item 49, or items 49-67 and change their assignment of items in 

the small list.

 

looking at a list menu and a list of checkboxes right now, but 

wondering if anyone has dealt with a similar problem and come up with 

a nice solution for it.

 

thanks -

 

MT

 

 

 

 

 

2.  Hugh Griffith - Monday, 2:38pm

 

Hi Michael,

 

I'm not sure I completely understand you. Is this what you're trying to

describe?

 

Let's say you have two bookshelvesA and B. You want to be able to take

books from shelf A, and place them in shelf B. You want to be able to move

multiple books at one time. You also want the ability to rearrange the books

on shelf B.

 

If so, I tried to solve this problem once too. You can read about my

solutions here http://interactionhero.com/articles/create-and-sort-a-list.

 

Hope that helps!

 

Hugh

 

On Mon, Sep 8, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Michael Tuminello <mt at motiontek.com> wrote:

 

> Hi -

> I'm looking for a way to assign a small number of multiple items (say 1-5)

> to a large number of multiple items (say 150).

> So I might want to assign small list items 1 to big list items 1-50, small

 

-- 

Hugh Griffith

User Interface Designer

 

 

 

 

 

3.  Michael Tuminello - Monday, 6:48pm

 

wow - thanks everyone for your responses. I didn't expect so many so 

fast. all the responses were interesting.

 

I guess my explanation was not very clear. I'll try again.

 

I have a long list of items (list A) each of which can use a short 

list of items (list B), either singularly or more than one. the 

problem is assigning one or more items in list B to one or more items 

in list A.  and then you have to account for going back and selecting 

multiple items in list A and indicating which items in list B belong 

to them even when they may have different assignments.

 

I am now leaning toward displaying all the items in list B for each 

item in list A with checkboxes even though there is a lot of 

redundancy in the display, like this, because at least there is no 

confusion about which items in list B belong to list A and it is still 

relatively quick to select list B items even though you can't make 

multiple assignments at once.

 

Item A1

      [checkbox] item B1

      [checkbox] item B2

      [checkbox] item B3

Item A2

      [checkbox] item B1

      [checkbox] item B2

      [checkbox] item B3

Item A3

      [checkbox] item B1

      [checkbox] item B2

      [checkbox] item B3

Item A4

      [checkbox] item B1

      [checkbox] item B2

      [checkbox] item B3

...

 

2nd runner up was a checkbox display for the items in list B that 

would show [-] when incompatible selections were made (selected for 

some) rather than [x] (selected for all), or [ ] (selected for none).

 

Anyone who has read this far gets a gold star!

 

Anyway, if anyone has any OTHER suggestions, let me know...

 

thanks again to everyone who responded so far.

 

Michael

 

 

 

 

 

4.  Eric Scheid - Monday, 7:37pm

 

On 9/9/08 11:48 AM, "Michael Tuminello" <mt at motiontek.com> wrote:

 

> Anyway, if anyone has any OTHER suggestions, let me know...

 

How about something a little more interactive? On the left hand side you'd

have your list of container items, and on the right hand side a list of your

component items. Put them into a select lists, scrolling if necessary. In

between you'd put a button to add the selected component items on the right

into the selected container items on the left, and a button to remove the

selected components from the left. If multiple components are selected when

the user hits the 'add' button, they all get added, if multiple containers

are selected when they hit 'add' then the selected component(s) get added

into each of the containers (multiple into multiple, woot!). Dynamically

disable the add/remove buttons depending on whether they have selected

appropriate things (including looking for already added items and also

inappropriate items).

 

This would be a variation on this pattern:

 

http://www.welie.com/patterns/showPattern.php?patternID=parts-selector

 

Start the widget off with at least one container item on the left selected,

let them select multiple on either side, and for the love of dog please do

some usability testing ;-)

 

e.

 

 

 

 

 

5.  Michael Tuminello - Monday, 10:13pm

 

what's more interactive than a checkbox? ;-)

 

thanks

 

On Sep 8, 2008, at 10:37 PM, Eric Scheid wrote:

 

> How about something a little more interactive? On the left hand side 

> you'd

> have your list of container items, and on the right hand side a list 

> of your

 

 

 

 

 

6.  Eric Scheid - Monday, 10:38pm

 

On 9/9/08 3:13 PM, "Michael Tuminello" <mt at motiontek.com> wrote:

 

> what's more interactive than a checkbox? ;-)

 

In Russia, checkbox click you!

 

e.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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