There are several resources divided into groups with different count (from 1 to 10). User has to enter an approximate usage of every resource in group, so average group cost can be calculated. This requires percentage utilization of resources inside the group, which is unknown, but user has to enter some assumption as ratio between them. In the following example average cost for Group A is 17.75, and Group B is 20.
Cost Expected utilization
Group A
Resource 1 10 0%
Resource 2 15 80%
Resource 3 25 5%
Resource 4 30 15%
Resource 5 40 0%
Group B
Resource 1 20 100%
Group C
Resource 1 20 100%
Resource 2 40 0%
Note that cost of the resources gradually rises, but in different steps.
Sum for every group is considered 100% and user has to find the ratio, how to divide 100% to every resource.
Number of resources in group:
1 Nothing to divide
2 Simple slider 0-100%
3 ????
I want to avoid this kind of dialog:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
The question is, what UI design allows to enter those ratios with minimum effort?
I thought about some "one click & drag" interface like this:
This doesn't work for following reasons:
- not working for 4+ resources (problem to set more than one resource to zero)
- it requires a lot of space
- when one resource outweighs the others, it is problematic to divide the smaller ones