Changes page re-worked
November 13th, 2009 by Richard GThis week has seen the overhaul of the changes page in the My spot area of the site. It now has the ability to allow users to filter the list of changes by their type of link to each observation, so now they can choose to see any combination of the following:
- Observations authored by them
- Observation that they’ve commented on
- Observations on their favourites list
- Observations they’ve added an identification to
- Observations where they’ve agreed with an identification
The results are then displayed in sections depending on the nature of the change that’s taken place. The possible sections are:
- Core observation details edited by others
- Comments added by others
- Identifications added by others
- Identifications that have been agreed with by others
I’m now just working on adding a bit more help text to the page to try and improve the instructions to the users on what everything does.
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
This is a useful development, but unfortunately I think the result presents the user with an additional layer (the filters) that get in the way of going directly to what people want. There ought to be a way of displaying the page that will get around this, for example by putting the filter options on the RHS of the page or in a sub-tab.
Alternatively, you could just use columns that indicate what has changed and let people sort by the column they want. I think this might be more intuitive. What we have at the moment requires thought, and I seem to remember seeing a book about usability called “Don’t make me think!”.