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I think a much easier solution for the end user, since you say the list of choices is the same for every row, is to have the table with the last column empty, and then a separate list somewhere on the page, near the table- not a dropdown but a list with all choices visible at a glance - where clicking a name will add it to the row automatically. This way, ...

A general principle for power users is that they appreciate efficiency and can learn almost any control you give them. This is fantastic from your point of view because it means you can focus your interface design on speed optimisations and cut a lot of distracting fluff. Let's break down your users' actual workflow for a moment. Check through form, ...

What you are describing is a Combobox and has been in use for as long as I can think about GUIs. The concept has gained new momentum in the web with the further development of dynamic elements and web apps – most notably google's search box with it's suggestions-as-you-type. Chrome's "Omnibar" is, basically, the same thing: It's a text field you can type in ...

The biggest problem I see with your current layout is the separation of content. It's very difficult to see the difference between your first time request to the one below it other than the repeating information. This will be even more difficult when viewed in a mobile browser. For the mobile version, I recommend separating the mobile view into two ...

Without understanding what the actual data is it's tough to recommend how to collapse but chances are users don't need to look at all of these columns at the same time. In fact since there is a scroll right now they can't look at them at the same time so you could easily swap out the scrolling interaction with the ability to collapse columns. So, I'd do ...

It seems that there are some conflicting views when deciding to use a bold field input label or not. “In this layout [with labels above the input fields], it’s advisable to use bold fonts for input field labels. This increases their visual weight and brings them to the foreground of the layout.”—Luke Wroblewski. However, in an eye tracking study ...

There are a number of general methods that can be used, but they all fall into one of three categories. Reward them in some way for filling out the information. This site does it by giving you the Autobiographer badge, but you could do it by rewarding your customers in any way that is appropriate. Punish them by withholding some feature or ability until ...

This sounds like a data-entry task, and I think it should be treated as such. That is, assuming that this is a task that returns with some frequency. When being confronted with such tedious work, it makes sense to optimize for speed rather than being friendly for new users. That means that you can afford your UI being harder to learn, as long as it is ...

It's no surprise that your users liked the old form better. It's almost always better for the user to see everything organized on one page at once, rather than one section at a time. This is because the user's eyes are always scanning and moving in various directions on the page and showing everything allows them to move through fields faster without ...

As we've designed a heavy-duty data entry forms (B2B/ERP) our case is probably different from the one stated, but it might shed some light upon it. Our users' interviews were inconclusive so we've decided to watch the users in action, take notes, measure occurrences of actions, and devise patterns of usage. On one form we had about 120 (!) fields. ...

I can't say I know of any research into this, but for me this would be a no go. It just isn't intuitive enough for the user. Perhaps a better solution would be to present the user with a drop-down in the first instance, if then the user cannot select an appropriate option, reveal an input field giving the user the ability to manually enter the relevant ...

You could provide markers beside the scrollbar to show where incomplete fields are in the form. You could also use this to indicate where the sections of the page are. download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups For inspiration/code take a look at the sausage.js library (example) and the Scrollbar of Contents Chrome ...

I attended a seminar on this subject in regards to developing mobile apps: http://www.uie.com/events/virtual_seminars/buttons_a_hack/ Josh suggested employing techniques used in gaming. Specifically, coaching and level up concepts. Coaching essentially is a guiding a sequence of behaviors. "Click here to add a user"... once they create one, ""you have ...

Some quick thoughts: Have two views: one to step through the tickets one by one, using the whole screen for a single ticket, and moving on to the next once an assignment is made, and one to give an overview of the assignments currently made. Both views have different use cases. Use something visual to represent the developers (like photographs). This makes ...

Frankly speaking, I'm a little bit confused: you have working solution, you have users with engrained habits, but you still want to use totally different solution because you think the screen is too crowded. User's habits should be respected. If, as developers, we ignore these habits, we risk violating people's expectations and creating mental ...

Horizontal scrolling is not OK when displaying data. Instead you need to implement data visualisation that reveals more the wider the viewport, and less the narrower the viewport. Implement drill-down techniques, responsive web design and adjust font sizes, white spaces, margins, paddings and borders to make your data understandable in any case. To do this ...

Side-scrolling a Table is Fine There’s nothing wrong with side (horizontal) scrolling of tables. Users of Excel do it all the time. You just need to have fixed (non-side-scrolling) row headers to identify the rows no matter where the user has scrolled in the table. That is, the table should by default have “frozen panes,” to use Excel’s term. Like maps, ...

I don't particularly see the point of increasing font size unless it is a heading or something. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/cc872782.aspx When possible, format the labels using bold text. Otherwise, put the labels in quotation marks only if required to prevent confusion. ...

You could have a 'copy down' row at the top. So users can use checkboxes to highlight the rows they want to change - enter the common value in the top 'master' row and then click a 'Copy down' button. I did this for an admin area for hotel owners who want to set prices for different dates. Then its just ticking a load of checkboxes, which can be tedious in ...

I would think about what the user is looking to achieve first and foremost and don't get stuck with existing technical solutions. If the user needs to classify 500 items then how would someone do that in real life? Do you use cards? How are the marked? Is there a way to do it that allows the user to group things and then just label them as a group? In ...

I know this pain :) I sometimes use just a Google Doc for bug tracking. Usually there are not that many developers as in your case, but they can be grouped in some categories (like PHP, Flash, CSS). The first idea is to limit the list of devs displayed in the selector. It would be great if you could do it automatically, based on some other columns. If you ...

Sorry to cut you off, I don't think this is even humanly possible to focus on a sheet a paper with 500 rows and for each row pick an answer from 20-30 drop down choices which in itself requires intensive visual scanning every time. Even if you are paying people to do that, you are betting on their ability to do this job. If I could translate this question ...

This isn't answering your question with research and what not but how about something like this? http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/#combobox Similar but filters down and could also accept the users unique input.

Though what dhmholley suggested for keyboard shortcuts looks pretty nice, I prefer to use Enter/Return for moving between sections; I, in addition, recommend using those keys for moving between invalid inputs when the user reaches to the end of the list, by skipping valid inputs and empty fields (as you mentioned that some fields might be left empty). The ...

I faced a similar problem with my current system. I decided to group the fields based on how they were filled in (i.e. field X being completed generally leads to Y, Z and $ being completes, but without field X the other 3 are surplus to requirement.) Each group could then be expanded of collapsed (UI screenshots follow - had to make field names anonymous ...

When I'm filling in a form I use a lot to go to the next field. You could have one keyboard shortcut for "next field" and a different one (crtl+tab?) for "next empty field". You should also create keyboard shortcuts for skipping to different sections of the form. I think that using an accordion or open / close sections could get annoying. How about a ...

Make uncompleted fields stick to the top/bottom of the viewport in a disabled state or show some kind of placeholder (like the "reply from X" indicator in gmail). Enable them when they are scrolled into view. For long forms you can collapse multiple warnings into one message. If there are sections there could be one summary per section. download ...

You could do a few things: Use an accordion: Each section could be one part of the accordion. see if the users respond well to an : open all sections and close all sections control. People who really really want to see all sections of the form can use this while the others are free to go section by section. Any section that may have been filled previously ...

How about using an accordion and give users the ability to independently open/close each section? Also, would the data to be entered be available in another computer system? If that's the case, you might want to provide a way to upload the data (e.g. as a CSV file) and edit to correct import errors.