I used to work for a software company that built a configurator / business rules engine. We drove web sites where inputs to one field would impact the availability / validity of options in other fields. It sounds like you have this sort of scenario, too.
We had some control over whether any given input would cause re-evaluation of the rules, such that the other fields (including drop-downs) would be re-drawn to reflect the choices that were still valid. We found that it was very important to re-draw when changes were likely to influence other controls on the same page, because users *really* don't like to make a selection in a control, only to be told that it's not a valid selection because of a choice they made two fields upstream. This is somewhat analogous to booking a flight, and having gone all the way through to choosing your seats, etc., be told that you've got to go back to the beginning because there isn't any room left on that flight, after all. These situations are sometimes unavoidable, but they'll never fail to frustrate a user. If you've got a high interaction among fields like this, I'd consider forcing the update so that the user is presented with choices that are (to the best of your knowledge) valid choices for them to make. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46155 ________________________________________________________________ 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
