Bug / Feature #218
closedPoor User Interface design
100%
Description
I'm aware that this is an experimental software in its earliest stage, but for a software to be successful (in particular amongst the everyday users) i'd have to be much more intuitive than now. I may be no rocket scientist but i consider myself not too bad with computers and stuff. However, facing the main screen of the software i have no idea what to do (without consulting the step-by-step documentation). Here clearly some work has to be done.
I have three suggestions for starters:
Certificate status on main screen
There is a checkmark for the server connection, why not introducing one for the certificate as well? It could be grayed out if there is no certificate installed and there could be a notice that one has to install one for being able to vote. To get a certificate installed, one could click on it. This would be intuitive.
Unimportant stuff away
Language settings can be done the first time the software is started and then put in a menu "settings" or something. The same holds for these 'Advanced Options'.
Sequential interface design is lame
I'm not sure if the authors misplace the software for a web site, but why does one have to press 'Next' to get a reaction? The distinction between 'Voting' and 'Tally only' which are obvious two distinct modes, could be easily done with tabs or something.
Updated by Anonymous over 13 years ago
Oh, sorry, this should be filed under 'usability'.
Updated by Anonymous over 13 years ago
Yes, but the one i know calls himself 'WIZZARD' and can't do any magic ... ;)
I hope this is not taken personally by the authors, all in all it's a damn cool piece of software, but most of its power clearly lies under the hood.
Updated by danilo over 13 years ago
I agree with the author of this issue. A lot of work needs to be done.
Possibly I could help with some of this stuff, even though I don't have a lot of experiences with .NET. What are you developing with? Visual Studio / .NET or Mono? Winforms?
Updated by Apophis over 13 years ago
Visual Studio / .NET, but its also possible to work with other editors.
Only pure winforms are allowed, there are no pInvokes or WPF allowed.
Updated by danilo over 13 years ago
Some other observations:
- When first starting the client, it makes no sense to choose "Abstimmen" in order to create my certificate. I would want a separate option, "Zertifikat erstellen", which is enabled by default if there's no existing certificate.
- s/Zum schluss/Zum Schluss/
- Printing does not work for me on Ubuntu 10.10.
- There were no print options. Ubuntu 10.10.
- After printing the certification request, the print button gets disabled. If there was an error printing the request, there is no possibility to re-print it. Also, there doesn't seem any possibiliity to re-upload it to the server in case there was a problem with doing this at first.
Don't take this personally, but there are very big usability issues with this pivote client. I would suggest marking the priority of this issue as "normal". Else, you will put off testers and critics of the e-voting concept.
Updated by danilo over 13 years ago
Sorry for double comment, but I can't edit my previous note. Another thing i noticed:
- I finally managed to print my certification request into a pdf file (the normal printing didn't work). After uploading the request to the server, the program simply quits. That's a strange behavior. I think it should go back to the main screen, with a note that the certificate needs to get verified first.