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I don't have great UI experience so if you think my mock-up is wrong let me know.

From a Service Status page I am retrieving the following data:

  1. Incident Creation DateTime (When the incident created)
  2. Incident Start DateTime (When the incident started, it might be different from the Creation DateTime)
  3. Incident Update DateTime (When the incident was latest updated)
  4. Incident Current Status (The current status of the Incident)
  5. Service Status (The Status of the service, it might be down or partially downgraded service etc.)
  6. Incident Title (The Incident Title)
  7. Incident Body/Message (The incident message, which explains in a few words what is wrong with the service)

Currently I am showing the information as follows:

enter image description here

  • A is a clock icon and on cover it displays the DateTime fields as they are not really important
  • B is a close button, on hover it displays "Close", and by clicking on it, it closes the message
  • C is the Incident Title
  • D is the Incident Body Message

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Now the problem is that I also need to display the Service Name which is really important I don't know how and where to to display it. I can't expand the available width, but I could increase the height.

More infomation

We have a software which was built in house which place shortcuts (not Windows Shortcuts) on a user's desktop regarding different IT functions. e.g. A shortcuts to our Service Desk Portal

This window will appear when there is an outage on one of our services and we update the 3rd party Service Status page which provides an API.

What we are trying to accomplish is to get the information out that one or more of our services is down and provide updates to our users because most of them won't read our Service Status Page automatic emails.

Any ideas?

Please note the screenshot below is from the actual UI but it misses the Incident Body/Message

enter image description here

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  • 2
    Could you explain a little bit more how the interface is used, what it is supposed to accomplish, who is using, in what escenario and what they are trying to accomplish?
    – Nicolas
    Oct 16, 2018 at 1:10
  • 1
    The most important thing you need to gather information on / document is the workflow that the user will follow. I find that writing this workflow down usually leads to a better solution than just trying to lay out controls on a screen.
    – Franchesca
    Oct 16, 2018 at 14:51
  • @NicolasHung I've added more information trying to answer your questions. Please let me know if you need more information.
    – Sonamor
    Oct 16, 2018 at 15:01
  • @Franchesca could you point me to a link on how to write or gather information for a workflow and I would be glad to do it. Thanks
    – Sonamor
    Oct 16, 2018 at 15:02
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    @Sonamor It is usually just a matter of asking the user. So you want to do X, what steps do you go through? Or if you don't know the purpose of it then just ask them what kinds of X they need to do, or what triggers you to start a workflow which ends with you doing X?
    – Franchesca
    Oct 17, 2018 at 9:02

1 Answer 1

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Considering this is quick window to notify the user about an outage for them to make any immediate decision, I would recommend keeping the info short and to the point:

enter image description here

The user quickly learns:

  1. What happened and the last update on the issue
  2. Current status of system (to see how this affects them)
  3. Current status of the incident.

If they want to explore more about the incident, we link them to the Service Status page where they can see the other dates and all updates. No need to show all this information in the window and overwhelm them.

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  • Thanks for you answer, sadly I don't have so much width available. The max I can use is 270 pixels. I was actually considering adding a link at the bottom to the incident with all the updates, your answer reassure me that this was a good think.
    – Sonamor
    Oct 16, 2018 at 16:21
  • 2
    Well you could use the same layout and fit it into 27px width. The concept still stands.
    – Nicolas
    Oct 16, 2018 at 20:03

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