Our product enables our (mostly non computer-savvy) users to gather data in a number of ways. They can they set all kinds of automatic behaviour based on this data.
This data is stored in our database and users can create views on this database. They can choose which columns a certain view has and filter the rows.
Lets say our db looks like this:
name | age | gender | occupation
--------------------------------
john | 28 | M | Cook
mary | 30 | F | Lawyer
bob | 70 | M | Retired
alice| 68 | F | Teacher
Now a user could create for instance these views:
- all columns and all rows (the complete db)
- all columns for all males (exclude certains rows)
- name and age for all rows (exclude certain columns)
- name and occupation for all people over 60 whose occupation is not "retired" (exclude some columns and some rows)
Since all these are views on the same data changing or deleting data in one view also changes the others.
We have a problem where a large subset of users doesn't come to this conclusion on their own without being told or reading it in the manual. They think of the views more like tabs in an excel file. Which can obviously cause large problems.
We dont want to put lots of text in the UI explaining this. But do need our users to understand how this works. Furthermore a small subset of users can't seem to get their heads around this at all. Even after we explain it to them multiple times. Some will even tell us they understand but their behaviour confirms they dont.