CS635 User Interface Design Report

A Web Based Visualization Tool For Analyzing Multi-dimensional Data

• James Baldwin
• Shailaja Gella
• Tony Mazza
• Jaya Polam
• Mamatha Ravi
• Steve Westling

The need to access corporate data from diverse locations, including situations in which the computer used might be, for instance, a customer's computer, dictated a solution that did not require special client software. A web-based approach meets this requirement. Web browsers are ubiquitous on corporate computers. The technology for web-based interfaces to databases is relatively new, but supported by a number of vendors. For purposes of developing a prototype, we decided to use a Microsoft-centric approach: Visual Basic and ActiveX controls. This allowed us to leverage existing expertise on the team and precluded the necessity to either build a graphics application from scratch or buy one for what was a proof-of-concept project.

Once the general approach had been agreed upon, the Project Team met in committee to develop an interface design. Initially we started sketching designs on paper—with much discussion and many changes, this quickly proved infeasible. We realized that there was a limited set of controls, and the real questions were their placement on the screen and contents. Therefore, we made paper models of the controls and war-gamed their placement using the table to model the computer screen. This approach allowed every one to see the design under discussion and to see the effect of proposed changes. For example, we were concerned about isolating the 'Home' button, since accidental selection would cause the user to lose his data and have to restart the program. Several time the relocation of other controls caused us to reconsider the location of the 'Home' button.

Based on our user profile, we were aware that potential users were well educated and familiar with web browsers. We believed that the affordance of relatively common windows controls would allow us to devote a minimal amount of screen real estate to labels, explanations and instructions, leaving a maximum amount of space available to display data and related graphics.

When the design was completed, the information in the model was transcribed to paper. The final design and the model are attached.