Questions tagged [business-application]
a program written to be used by a business.
85
questions
103
votes
19
answers
21k
views
Should we kill the features that users are not using frequently, to improve performance?
According to the heat map that we generated for our app (an ad server), users rarely sort the items in the lists, they usually use the search to find the items they wanted to find. Developers said it ...
- 2,280
81
votes
22
answers
17k
views
Do we need good-looking design for a program internal only to our company?
Do we need to make the user-interface look good (adding images, animations, etc.) for a program internal only to the company?
Making the user-interface look good might slow the performance of the ...
- 1,605
76
votes
13
answers
57k
views
What is the best way to deal with very complex forms?
I'm trying to give the best experience to users of a very huge system (like a CRM). It has a lot of forms and much of these have a lot of fields. My doubt is about if I should use a single column form ...
- 1,033
73
votes
6
answers
160k
views
Preferred format to display negative currency (US English)? [closed]
Which would be the more readable way to format negative numbers:
-$99.99
($99.99)
Some other format I haven't considered
Details:
Most of our user base has finance experience, but some have none at ...
- 1,505
17
votes
5
answers
22k
views
Truncating long text labels - Best Practices?
I was wondering whether there are any studies around truncated labels, in case if they ever get too long and layouts can't fix it? Does it confuse users if a label is truncated with an ellipsis ...
- 443
17
votes
5
answers
5k
views
Should Dialogs be avoided in modern applications?
I have used a few dialogs on the last system I designed. The application was a business application with many database tables and I used many datagrids to show data. It was common that I placed a ...
- 483
16
votes
6
answers
3k
views
What is the best way to deal with very long form labels?
I have very long labels in some forms, including forms in modal windows. There are some cases we have labels with more than 80 chars, which is bad because:
Users need to read/track all the labels to ...
- 1,033
15
votes
7
answers
23k
views
Good design for Web Apps with Large Forms [closed]
I've been browsing through the web for good templates/themes but I've never seen a really, really good example for the typical Business App with 20-40 fields per page and 2-5 tabs in between. Most of ...
- 253
11
votes
5
answers
2k
views
Folding columns of a kanban view
In our enterprise management software, we use "kanban" views for different purposes; pipeline of business opportunities, tasks, recruitment process, bugtracker, etc. The example bellow shows the ...
- 173
10
votes
3
answers
8k
views
Showing/Hiding vs.Enable/Disabling form fields
I would like to know the benefits and drawbacks regarding to form design of "dependent fields". For example, in my form I have a Marital Status field, and depending on it's value, I need to know the ...
- 348
8
votes
4
answers
4k
views
Why most software businesses require the users to "request a demo" to see their products?
I have noticed that on the large majority of software businesses, their products will not be shown to you unless you request a demo from their site, usually from a form by providing your personal ...
- 93
8
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Can an input field be too wide?
Topic of discussion.
Is it a usability problem to have an input field be too wide?
For example:
I am creating an internal management system where users come to view orders in the system.
When ...
- 2,296
8
votes
4
answers
693
views
upgrade-friendly visual treatment for features disabled in the free version of a freemium product
My company is preparing to launch a "freemium" web application for business users. Most of the surface area of the app will be enabled in the free version, but a few features (e.g. ability to assign ...
- 1,833
8
votes
2
answers
220
views
How can I get hold of customers and users for research and usability testing when the business is protective or needs approval each time?
One of the things I find most difficult is while we (designers and devs) are working in an iterative agile environment, getting a hold on users and customers and trying to meet them in regular basis ...
- 103
8
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Reporting web app - how to design large data tables?
I'm working on a legacy webapp that's mainly focused on reporting large amounts of data - ie tables with 20+ columns reporting financial data. The main problem is table layout inconsistency depending ...
- 181
7
votes
4
answers
2k
views
How to get the difference between Corporate and Consumer Branding across to clients?
This seems to be a regular question that comes up during conversations at work. We provide solutions to corporate companies but the end users are inevitably consumers. We seem to be in a Design by ...
6
votes
2
answers
3k
views
How to structure complex forms for business documents?
In our enterprise management software we use forms to record document like customers, invoices, sales order, tasks, products, etc. We wanted forms to look like their hard paper version.
Below is an ...
- 173
6
votes
7
answers
1k
views
How to communicate foreign key constraints in a business application?
I have a business app with various business forms where users edit data. When a user deletes a record - it shows "FK_ABC_AA.. constraint violated, etc."
I want to do better than that and tell the ...
- 183
6
votes
1
answer
673
views
Should large (wide) numbers be truncated differently than text?
Usually, when we have to display a text and we do not have enough space to display the whole text, it can be truncated and this could be indicated by an ellipsis.
See for example this question:
...
- 2,550
6
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Common screen resolution? (In a business environment)
Inspired by "Common screen resolution?" and a debate at work where I defended the teachings of this site...
In the debate we argued about how the business environment differ from home environment in ...
- 5,938
6
votes
3
answers
1k
views
Recommended books for enterprise application interface design [closed]
I've been reading a lot on UX lately with the intention of improving the user experience on the custom applications we develop. Most of the resources I used are targeting informational websites. I ...
- 161
5
votes
5
answers
161
views
Do links need to be blue in business application?
I am currently designing a screen for an internal business application, in this screen is a table that contains a lot of orders, each of these orders have many entities associate with it.
- Two ...
- 2,296
5
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Entering a relative date range (in a report writer)
Our company's B2B web app includes a simple report writer where advanced users can save simple reports that other users can run. Currently, every report includes a date range that users must fill in ...
- 1,833
5
votes
4
answers
250
views
Should we ask users to play a role when performing user testing?
I'm actually working on a users-testing session, to test an expense report application.
My question is: When I ask the user to do a task, should I ask them to play a role?
Example: If we want users ...
5
votes
7
answers
312
views
How to display a distinction between actions which affect the 'real world' vs. actions that affect only the information in the application?
I have the following challenge:
I'm designing a web application that is supposed to manage IT components. Meaning - when the user creates an IT component in the application or updates an existing one,...
- 405
5
votes
2
answers
910
views
Dealing with Effective Dates in an Administrative Application
When dealing with Insurance based information, we often need to implement the use of Effective Dates on most of our data. There are numerous reasons for this that I won't get into, needless to say ...
- 811
5
votes
3
answers
737
views
What is the preferred way of creating a help section for applications?
I'm wondering if there is a modern and preferred approach of the manual format from the standpoint of users. I thought about making a CHM file but my manager told me that feels very "Windows 98ish" ...
- 181
5
votes
1
answer
337
views
How to manage actions that could be nested 3 or 4 levels deep?
I have a site that has a main menu that is tabbed, and a sub-menu that always displays actions for the current selected tab.
For more areas on the site, this works perfectly, but one of the tabs is ...
- 373
4
votes
5
answers
933
views
Name of the logged off part of an application/a website
I'd like to know how you would call the part of the application which is not the showcase, not the app itself, but the part between both.
Let me explain with more details. It is something very common ...
- 143
4
votes
2
answers
134
views
Has anyone had any experience with inputs similar to apple's calendar "create quick event"?
For the past few years apple's calendar app has used this concept of "create quick event" where the user types a sentence in a format that allows the application to separate the data, and create the ...
- 2,296
4
votes
3
answers
104
views
Staying current with many enterprise applications in the portfolio
Our organization has 6 applications that our end-users interact with on a daily basis. Each application is developed by a separate team and lives in their own solution files. We've made an effort in ...
- 435
4
votes
2
answers
1k
views
Alternative control to drag and drop for assigning tasks to an individual?
I am working on a web application for Branch Managers at an investment bank to assign accounts that are without Financial Advisers for whatever reason. Some reasons are the Financial Adviser has ...
- 41
4
votes
2
answers
390
views
How to present a view with large number of inputs
I'm developing a dashboard for hotel managament system application.
There's a view that allows the user to set prices for room types in different currencies. Sadly, I can't provide any screenshots as ...
4
votes
5
answers
317
views
Deleting object when a related item is in use
I have a problem with an application that I've written. The usage is about to change and now multiple users will interact with the system.
Given that there will be multiple administrators what is ...
- 225
4
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Reason that most (business) applications have a blue theme?
Most applications use blue as their central color, particularly business applications (e.g. Windows uses blue in most of it's chrome).
I am being pushed to use purple throughout our current ...
- 151
3
votes
6
answers
129
views
How do you convince people that social software applications are good for business? [closed]
We're trying to introduce social software applications into our organisation but attempts thus far are meeting resistance because:
we're a large, conservative organisation that will always be a late ...
- 711
3
votes
6
answers
2k
views
How to create bands of number ranges for a field?
I have a field in a system called "Score" which ranges from an undetermined negative number to an undetermined positive number. I am trying to figure out a UI for the user to create "bands" of ...
- 11.7k
3
votes
2
answers
268
views
space-efficient UI to choose between auto-generated text or manual text entry
I'm building a part of an HTML form (titled "New Commission Rule") in a web application used by business users to enter and report on sales commissions in a retail store. See http://jsfiddle.net/q3KaH/...
- 1,833
3
votes
3
answers
520
views
How to optimise our data entry page for tablets
SetUp:
In our Inventory Control application, we have updated our Stock Count page so that restaurants can count by counting area which then adds up to a total for each item. The old way just allowed 1 ...
- 173
3
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Where and when to show currency symbols for TextFields containing currency?
How should I design a form that is easy to use and understand that has a few textfields for currency?
Should the currency symbol be put outside or in the textfield?
One variant is to show the ...
- 483
3
votes
3
answers
303
views
Are there services out there that allow you to easily upgrade or downgrade?
I noticed that in many different types of products and services that offer a few different subscription plans, upgrading is easy. Downgrading, on the other hand, is a bit discreet. In most of them, ...
- 1,325
3
votes
1
answer
204
views
Usability concerns for managing queues of items to be worked
Here's a genericized story for an issue I'm curious about:
A secure website for ACME Company has a
table of thousands of widget orders in an
"initial" status that need to be processed online.
...
- 1,300
3
votes
2
answers
1k
views
How should I design an MS Access application for Excel users?
I work for a public health study, and I have been asked to help manage the workflow for an upcoming project. We will be choosing subjects, tracking our contact with them, interviewing them, placing ...
- 131
3
votes
1
answer
668
views
Reporting in a CRUD application
It is yet another enterprise related app dilemma.
Most professional apps use report writers that are way too complicated for the general user, even though most of them are wysiwyg.
Some simple apps ...
- 219
3
votes
1
answer
841
views
Why designer choose a tabbed document interface (TDI) design if most user like multi-document interface (MDI)?
I have to choose the design for a complex “business” application.
I work at the public prosecutors’ office and we need to develop an application to that handle hundreds of fields, grouped in ...
3
votes
1
answer
85
views
Are there best practices on using rolling vs. historic timeframe in generating business reports?
I'm working on a reports dashboard for IT Admin users. I need to make a UX recommendation on date range for the reports, and am trying to understand what is best for these expert users: Rolling data (...
3
votes
2
answers
150
views
How to handle business users and an application that requires GPS access
We currently manage an application that is sold exclusively to businesses, but users can use the application on any device. Our app requires location services to be on to function properly but does ...
- 33
3
votes
1
answer
609
views
Should employees and customers use the same or specialized interfaces for completing the same tasks?
A company previously had one application that customers could use to access their account, pay their bill etc. Alternatively, customers could call, and an employee would answer the phone and do all of ...
- 33
2
votes
4
answers
1k
views
Are Animated Images considered bad UX?
I read that animated gifs are making a come back but when i saw this on a private business website to get attention to a new feature, put me off.
Copy of the image : http://postimg.org/image/...
- 129
2
votes
6
answers
1k
views
WebApp User Login Screen
I am currently considering options for a web/intranet application login screen and this seems like a good place to share.
Not much work has gone into the current screen since creation and it exists ...
- 23