iPad UI for selecting and configuring from many available options

Question

I've had this rattling around in my brain for the last couple days, but I can't seem to come up with a smooth UX for this.

I'm building a stock graphing application. Included are around 300ish technical indicators, each with a number of user-configurable options. This will be presented in a popover (unless I can come up with a good reason for it to be elsewhere, modal, flip-side of the graph?).

The list of functions will obviously be searchable and perhaps filterable by category, but the twist is that users should be able to add more than one of the same indicator, configured independently, so I can't just use a table view with check boxes and disclosure circles.

The best thing I can come up with is a "currently enabled" list with an "add" button, but that seems limiting to me for some reason. Anyone better at UI than me got other ideas?

Answer 1

If you do want to use a table view and the only thing limiting you from doing so is that the same indicator can appear several times, there can be a solution.

Assuming each indicator is a row in the table, you can enable the user to duplicate it to create two "instances" of the same indicator and then setting the parameters for each instance (row) individually.

To make things easier, you can also number or name the instances.

Hope I'm hitting the mark here... perhaps a sketch or mockup might help.

Answer 2

I think you're on the right track of letting the user construct a "graph" out of a set of "indicators" which are customized each time they are added to the graph. So the user starts with an empty list of indicators and an add button, and then works through the list to find what they are looking for.