Stealing best practice
June 10th, 2009
Posted by Chris
We’ve been doing some interface design for Magic Studio, a multimedia tool used by schools.
In one task, the students have to decide how significant they think economic, social and environmental factors are for a variety of objects (in this case, buildings).
Ian’s been facing the problem of how to represent the results. Three separate screens? Live feedback? Perhaps the icons should be coloured or varied by size to convey their different axes?
He worked on paper for a while, and then hunched over the screen. After a while, there was a squawk.
“I’ve got it.”
He showed me. It was Google Analytics.
“It’s brilliant, isn’t it?”
And it is. We both look at Google Analytics all the time, but had never seriously examined how the interface elements worked, and how well they communicated the complex options that the service offers. Ian walked me through how the tabs indicated their content, how the dropdowns offered extra options that made sense, and how the multiple layers of data overlay.
“I think we should just rip it off.”
I agreed, although I prefer to call it emulating best practice.
A couple of hours later Ian was there. It didn’t look like Google Analytics, but I could see where the ideas had settled in to his design. We’ll see how well it works when it goes for testing with the school groups.
