UI_Review

I am currently undertaking a review of the UI to get ideas for how to improve the useability of the opendb software for the average user. There will be some additional minor changes made to version 1.0 before its release, but for version 1.1, 2.0 I plan on doing a pretty significant revision of the interface where appropriate. It would be extremely helpful to get lots of feedback on the problem areas in the software. Some examples of feedback to date has included:

• Review 15th December 2006 - based on demo1.0a site.
  • Move the menu to the right
  • Group the options in the menu more tightly, get rid of duplicate Listing links (So My Item List and All Items List would be replaced with a single Listings link, and the option to restrict the listing would be provided within listings itself).
  • Further refinement of listings to link it to search screen.
  • Integration of Item search and results / item input pages. It should be clearer how to choose an item from site search results to add to opendb, for instance an 'Add Item' link or similiar.
  • The radio button layout in item add is ok, but the site logo should not link off to the external site, but instead should cause the current to be chosen (in other words the radio button should be selected when clicking the logo)
  • The 'New' text in the tabbed layout, where multiple attributes are available to be chosen should be changed to make it clearer what is happening.
  • The tabbed layout in item display should be reconsidered - something like amazon where all the information is displayed on the screen all at once.
  • The search page should be changed so that a small subset of input fields is visible and the rest is hidden behind an 'Advanced' options div.
  • The login / home page layout should be changed to remove all the white space, perhaps the announcements should take up more of the screen, or have some additional default content, such as a film strip of latest added items.
  • The help icon should be clickable.
  • Ratio should be a radio button list, and introduce a new 'Full Screen' checkbox attribute. This suggestion is debatable, and can be configured by individual sites anyway.
  • Instance Info concept is not clear
  • Borrow functionality workflow needs review
  • The H1 link in top of page should take back to home page
  • Order by functionality links in listings should be clearer