After 1/2 day spent using and testing the new simplified UI of RapidInformer V1.2, I have a couple of comments and suggestions:
1) contextual help (tooltip and/or plain text) is absolutely required.
2) don't show the Expression and throw away the "Add New Expression". Basic users will never be able to read or write syntaxically correct expressions. They usually don't know the exact notifications attribute names, the UserDefined fields, etc... . Only the Admin will write expressions, or a power-user via the full GUI.
3) The so-called Rule object that the user is asked to create is not really needed. I would make the GUI simpler by having a table with one line per (pre-defined by the admin) rule, and the following rows:
Rule Description | Actions | Email | SMS | Jabber | etc
and the cells in the Channels rows would :
- be active when the channel exist and is configured for that user; otherwise empty
- contain a 'tick-in-box"
The user would then simply select 1/ which rules 2/ which channel and then click on an apply button. And that's it. Changing his settings would be done by unticking the cells.
4) A logout button is required.
Paul
We will provide more
We will provide more guidance on the wizards, definitely necessary to make steps more clear.
We understand that due to different needs and skill levels of end-users, our customers may need to work with various alternate user interfaces instead of the full blown UI of RapidInformer. The simplified UI was our first attempt to demonstrate how such alternate UIs could be created. We will take your feedback into consideration while enhancing our first example and while providing new examples.