If this is an "expert system", one used by professionals In the execution of their jobs, then you should create a simple semantic interface. Allow the user to select any number of books using ctrl-click, then drag the selection onto a target that executes the action.
Might even work for a public system, if your user base is adequately web-savvy or willing to do the actions one at a time. Dante Murphy | Director of User Experience| D I G I T A S H E A L T H 229 South 18th Street | Rittenhouse Square | Philadelphia, PA 19103 | USA Office: +1 215 399 3456 | Fax: +1 215 545 4440 | Mobile: +1 215 292 3144 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.digitashealth.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alan Wexelblat Sent: Friday, November 21, 2008 3:38 PM To: IxDA Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Looking for a design pattern - actions on itemsrepresented in rows of a data grid I have what I think is a common problem but I don't like any of the design patterns I've seen and I'm hoping someone can suggest a better approach. The interface object consists of a data table showing key facts about a real-world entity. I want to let people do one of several things with these entities. Let's take the example of books. Say I'm representing books in a collection. Then I might have a table with columns like "Title", "Author", ISBN, etc. Given a table of books the person might want to do a number of things, such as deleting the record, marking them as having been read, noting that they're on loan, etc. The typical design I've seen for this is to have the data columns on the left and one or more action columns on the right; typically each action is represented by a checkbox. The problem is that the checkboxes start to clutter things up and are both visually ugly as well as confusing if the user has to manipulate more than 10-20 rows. (*) Another pattern is to put a single select box on the left and then have the users choose an action when one or more boxes has been selected - gmail uses this pattern. The problem here is that the possible actions are hidden behind a dropdown. (Actually, on examination, gmail cheats by putting up a few buttons for the presumed common actions and hiding the rest on a dropdown. That's very Windows-toolbar-ish but saves on space.) Anyone got a better pattern I can look at? --Alan (*) Yes, ideally they'd sort or filter their lists before trying to work with them, but I can't count on the users doing that. ________________________________________________________________ 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 ________________________________________________________________ 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
