How to design a parent child relation Edit dialogue

Question

Does anyone know a good way to design an administration dialogue to add and edit items that have a parent child relationship?

Example 1) Bikes in the mockup below

• x bike categories (mountain bike, race bike, e-bike)
• and for each bike category
• z different bikes
• or z variations of the same bike (Super Kid 1 in black, Super Kid 1 in red)
• or z different markets (Super Kid 1 for england, Super Kid 1 for sweden).

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

Example 2) Users and Groups

• user in groups -> click on a user and see in which groups he is a member,
• and also members of group -> click on a group and see every member).

Question

So i am looking for a design pattern

• for administrative dialogues for parent child relationship.
• to add new bikes but also to edit existing bikes.

Thanks

Answer 1

Well you could think about applying miller's columns: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns

I've seen very nice implementation of this pattern in deviantart.com with a search input above selector, screenshot:

Answer 2

I would separate the option of add a new one completely and add the edit option for each element. In the way that inside of each category section we have an "Add new one" button at the beginning of the list and a "edit" button per bike.

In this way is easier to edit a specific bike and even easier add a new one.