ThinkQuest People : Managing a School Roster
This was a recent design enhancement to a component of ThinkQuest. The old model required page-by-page trip to the server as the user navigates to find an account. It was painfully slow. In the new model, we load the entire student body into one window and make it really simply for the user to narrow down the selection and find the appropriate user.
Old Design:
New Design:
Other improvements include:
- Scan of account names is much easier in one column list instead of three. We now allocate extra width to the name column and solve the problem of displaying long names.
- Adding a login column made it really simple for the teacher to identify both active and expiring accounts in one view. That new column provides sufficient feedback to eliminate several application screens that dealt with identifying deactivated accounts.
- Ability to scan and select a user by multiple criteria: alpha, level & activity
- The old design had two navigation paradigms running – a pull-down to select by grade level and then click to select by alpha letter. Standardizing on one simplifies the experience. All narrow down options are on one row.
- A search bar was included to further enhance the module.
I love a simple design that solves multiple problems. This was fun to discover and solve.
Tags: Interact, ThinkQuest
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