Best way to show historical information of form fields?

Question

I have a form where i have fields(15-30) of various types textbox/radio/checkbox/select. Now i have to show the historical information of all the fields. Right now, i handling it by providing a icon to all fields and show the needed info in modal window. I understand this interaction style is really not intuitive.

It has to Show all/ some important fields that changed over the past period of time and tell that last time someone updated this project(who, when and what). Also, client will export the data for reporting purpose

Use Cases:

A:Has someone updated my project… who, when and what.

Can someone suggest me a good approach or any related design pattern would be helpful?

Answer 1

37 Signals shows a list of changes if you click through to it. You might do something similar. Here's my wireframe for reference.

I use strikethrough text to show the old text, but you could just as well highlight it in gray or pink, while highlighting the new value in yellow or green.

You could also arrange this any old way; I simply want to illustrate the concept of showing a changelog.

Answer 2

I wouldn't try to show historic information near every field. That's way too much trouble to the person that wants to check every field. It can work only as an additional option. If, of course, I understand problem of your users correctly.

As a primary option you may want to provide 'sum up' section above the form with all information that was provided to the form and select/dropdown with info about last changes.

Here's a little wireframe I made in UXPin App. You can elaborate on that: http://app.uxpin.com/c91fa4d9267715510ae6cb5dd6d1b0b8df669b06/29197

Consider quick qualitative study of the UI with final users.

Answer 3

I think highlighting the field that has been changed (for example a yellow background, for warning) and then displaying a tooltip on hover is an intuitive and not-too-invasive solution for what you are looking for.

Such highlights are used in version controlling systems like github or mediawiki:

Answer 4

You could simply show a list of changes in a grid view.

If changes are part of your system, you might want to keep track of them. If you are keeping track of them, then you can display them to the user if he would like to see them.

I'm am currently working on a system that makes sure document data matches database data. I'm doing this in WPF so my view model has a enum property that returns the status of the property. I bind this property to the color of the control. Then I use a converter to convert the enum to a color. For example, if "Name" is different, the control color turns red.

I hope this helps.