Hi, I'm working on project that I think is somewhat unique, and unfortunately, I can only describe it in very general terms.
It's a data entry system for items that contain rather large amounts of data. There are about 20 categories of data associated with each item. Each category will contain roughly 5 to 10 pieces of actual information (numbers, dates, short strings, etc), and many of the categories will be used several times for each item. So the user will end up entering several hundred values for each item. These values, by the way are not simply being copied from somewhere else, they must be interpreted from other sources and will actually require a bit of thought. Users are probably going to be entering a fairly small number of items, maybe 10 to 50, and then possibly not use the product again for several months, or possibly over a year. So, the emphasis here will be on creating an easily learnable system rather than one that's necessarily easy for experts to use, because we don't really expect anybody to become an expert. The quick summary would be: a system for inputting massive amounts of non-obvious data that will be used heavily for a couple days at a time and then ignored for months or years. Does anybody know of any examples of similar systems or any sort of design guidelines that might be applicable? The only similar applications that I can imagine would be something like entering all of the flight data for an airline or detailing the manufacturing process for a car, which I'd imagine would be very secret programs that I wouldn't be able to look at. As for design guidelines, I've found general guidelines about web forms to be of some use, but these all tend to deal with very simple single page forms. Any other ideas would be very appreciated. Cheers, Carl _________________________________________________________________ Get more out of the Web. Learn 10 hidden secrets of Windows Live. http://windowslive.com/connect/post/jamiethomson.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!550F681DAD532637!5295.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_domore_092008 ________________________________________________________________ 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
