Work Effort UI work

[Adrian Crum <ad...@hlmksw.com>]

We just rolled out the Work Effort component where I work, and users are 
complaining about the UI - it's confusing and a little too "techie." I'd 
like to start working on making it more user-friendly. Don't freak out - 
I'm not going to make any major changes, I'll just clean up the labels a 
little and maybe re-arrange a few things.

If anyone has any suggestions, or if your users have any suggestions, 
please share them with me.

-Adrian

Re: Work Effort UI work

[David E Jones <de...@me.com>]

On Jul 10, 2009, at 9:58 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:

> We just rolled out the Work Effort component where I work, and users  
> are complaining about the UI - it's confusing and a little too  
> "techie." I'd like to start working on making it more user-friendly.  
> Don't freak out - I'm not going to make any major changes, I'll just  
> clean up the labels a little and maybe re-arrange a few things.
>
> If anyone has any suggestions, or if your users have any  
> suggestions, please share them with me.

I guess the main thing to keep in mind is that the priorities for the  
"base applications" (in the components in the ofbiz/applications  
directory) are:

1. easy to customize and reuse development artifacts
2. easy to use

In other words, decisions to make it easier to use are secondary to  
keeping/making it easy to customize.

The solution for the ease of use is to create something that is  
organized around roles/actors or business processes, instead of around  
the data model as the base applications are (so that they will be  
easier to customize and reuse).

To do this you might want to consider creating a specialpurpose  
application, like Hans did with the project stuff based on WorkEffort,  
and then reuse as much as possible from the WorkEffort app and  
component but feel free to change whatever you want. You can bootstrap  
this by doing something similar to the "ecomclone" webapp so it is  
exactly like the workeffort webapp, and then override screens, menus,  
forms, etc, etc as needed.

-David

Re: Work Effort UI work

[BJ Freeman <bj...@free-man.net>]

also  re-evaluated current ui's that can be broken down further for re-use.

David E Jones sent the following on 7/10/2009 2:03 PM:
> 
> On Jul 10, 2009, at 9:58 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:
> 
>> We just rolled out the Work Effort component where I work, and users
>> are complaining about the UI - it's confusing and a little too
>> "techie." I'd like to start working on making it more user-friendly.
>> Don't freak out - I'm not going to make any major changes, I'll just
>> clean up the labels a little and maybe re-arrange a few things.
>>
>> If anyone has any suggestions, or if your users have any suggestions,
>> please share them with me.
> 
> I guess the main thing to keep in mind is that the priorities for the
> "base applications" (in the components in the ofbiz/applications
> directory) are:
> 
> 1. easy to customize and reuse development artifacts
> 2. easy to use
> 
> In other words, decisions to make it easier to use are secondary to
> keeping/making it easy to customize.
> 
> The solution for the ease of use is to create something that is
> organized around roles/actors or business processes, instead of around
> the data model as the base applications are (so that they will be easier
> to customize and reuse).
> 
> To do this you might want to consider creating a specialpurpose
> application, like Hans did with the project stuff based on WorkEffort,
> and then reuse as much as possible from the WorkEffort app and component
> but feel free to change whatever you want. You can bootstrap this by
> doing something similar to the "ecomclone" webapp so it is exactly like
> the workeffort webapp, and then override screens, menus, forms, etc, etc
> as needed.
> 
> -David
> 
> 
> 

-- 
BJ Freeman
http://www.businessesnetwork.com/automation
http://bjfreeman.elance.com
http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1237480&locale=en_US&trk=tab_pro
Systems Integrator.