[Design] Should dashboard display order change immediately after edits?

Mimi Yin mimi at osafoundation.org
Mon Nov 5 10:58:20 PST 2007


On Nov 1, 2007, at 10:29 AM, Dan Steinicke wrote:

> Currently the display order of summary table rows can change  
> immediately after a user completes an edit on an item.  I think  
> this is undesirable behavior.  I think the table view should only  
> re-order when the column headers are clicked, or in response to the  
> passage of time.

Dan, are you speaking from a testing perspective? I think the idea is  
that most of the time, users are sorted by Triage, so this isn't as  
much of an issue.

> As part of recording a test script I wanted to select each item in  
> the table from top to bottom and add a 'X' at the beginning of each  
> title.  I found this operation difficult to do because regardless  
> of which column I sorted on (I tried Title, date, and task) at some  
> point the table would re-order in response to my edits.  I find  
> this automatic re-ordering very annoying behavior and find it hard  
> to believe most users would want the table to behave this way.

This would work if you sorted by Triage Status, no?

> I think this also ties in to the end user confusion around the  
> "Triage" button.  I have always thought it would be much more  
> intuitive to just have the triage column header button do what the  
> "Triage" button now does.  In my understanding the main function of  
> the "Triage" button is to prevent row reordering when you change  
> the triage state.  If rows only re-ordered when the headers were  
> clicked then it would seem we would be able to simplify this work  
> flow as well.

I think we can make the column header do the same thing as the Triage  
button.

The disadvantage of having *only* the column header as the way to  
Triage is that users will want to 'Triage' often, but not reverse the  
sort order often. I think we'll run into people not wanting to click  
on the column header because they don't want DONE to be at the top.

>         Are there users out there who like the automatic re- 
> ordering in response to edits? Are there users out there who are  
> annoyed by the dashboard re-ordering in response to edits?
> Dan  _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design



More information about the Design mailing list