UXDiva posts have become sparce lately. This is because I’ve been heads-down working on transforming a java based web app into a Flex-based Rich Internet Application. This is been such a great experience being able to leverage new technology to create different design patterns, and ease of use.

There have been plenty of challenges during this process. Having a solid information architecture for the suite of products in development would be nice. One of the design issues that has come up is the use of a “delete” button. Should we offer a delete button, or should the user just use the delete key on their keyboard? It seems to me that every opportunity should be taken to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible. However, if one of the applications in the suite follows that design pattern, then they all should. Needless to say I’m losing this battle.

Another design challenge has been determining when to refresh the user’s screen. We try to avoid refreshes as much as possible because it inhibits the speed of the application, however, how to we let the users know that their view is not updated. When you have the possibility of hundreds of users using an Infrastructure management tool, and several people could be making changes to the infrastructure at once, when does it become a collaboration tool? Do we notify the user when new connections have been made? How do we determine how much information is too much information?

Due to the lack of customer exposure doing the design process, we will have to hash out some of these details during the product beta, but it would have been nice to have all these details before development started. Sometimes you never know how something is going to feel until you use it.

–That’s all for me today, signing off! UXDiva.