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We've got input-heavy UIs, the one I'm working on right now is a single window with >150 input fields including multiple child tables up to levels 3 deep with t
by Joeri 4y ago
We've got input-heavy UIs, the one I'm working on right now is a single window with >150 input fields including multiple child tables up to levels 3 deep with their own grids.
I went through this transition in the late 2000’s, moving grid and form heavy delphi windows screens to webpages, using ExtJS, the only framework at the time which kind of sort of could do this.
The process made me realise two things:
1. if you try to map information-dense UI’s like that to the web, it will cost more to develop and the UX will be worse. (we saw double the dev cost and a slower and more cumbersome ui)
2. in most cases information-dense UI like that is bad design and should be avoided. I couldn’t see it back then how things could be done differently to make screens less dense, but looking back there were plenty of ways.
- magicalhippo 4y ago> in most cases information-dense UI like that is bad design and should be avoided. We do auto-expand a lot of groups, ie for company name and address fields we might just show name and org. number until you enter the company name field, at which point we show with the full name and address set. Once you leave the group it collapses again. Still, the information-dense UI is what our users like, as far as I can determine. They want to take one look at an order or invoice and get the info they need, not having to flip through several tabs or pages. Part of this is also driven by gov't requirements. That is, users are officially responsible for the data they submit, so they must be able to see all the data they submit.