GUI - suggestions and feeback needed

[Lokorin]

The GUI is going to be altered to fit some kind of way to view and alter the participation in 1.4.0 . The part of the interface that handled logs is now empty. This is an opportunity to remake the GUI and give it a better layout. I'm however not very adept at designing something user-friendly, so I welcome all and any feedback about the current GUI and suggestions on how to improve it.

I'm currently thinking about tabbing most of the small parts of it so that one is not swamped with information.

[Kolkas]

I like the layout as it is now, my only wish is to make possible to change loot values directly in the cell, like the dkp value of an interval or an event.

Or at least, if that's not possible, to have the list not rolling over to the start as soon as I change an item value or i delete an item from the loot list.

Bye, Kol.

[Lightning]

[Lokorin]

Thanks for the feedback about the loot, I will try to fix that.

[Lokorin]

Here is a suggestion for the layout in 1.4.0 .

First of all the four GUI pieces have been bundled together (blue), this is mostly because more space is needed for a timeline (explained later). I also don't see it as necessary to see two of the bundled parts at the same time, so tabbing between them should be enough.

One possible problem is that one might miss suspected errors if they are not visible, also the DKP in and out might be nice to see at all times. Therefor a status bar (purple) is added to the bottom of the GUI, it will display DKP in/out, number of errors, reward intervals and events. If there's anything else that you think it should display then please tell me.

The reward intervals and events table are the same as in 1.3.10. But there is no DKP out displayed for every reward interval (because loot is no longer connected to a specific reward interval). It is replaced by a cell for entering a reward interval's zone (as that was previously tied to logs).

Then there's the complete participation (green). This is where one will be able to control the (complete) participation of the raid. I will reuse the part of the GUI that currently handles logs, so it will look very similar to that. The main difference is that there won't be any place for entering a zone name, but rather there will be three new buttons. One for splitting the interval into two new intervals and two for combining the interval with the previous or next interval. Another difference is that it will display one tab for every time the participation changes during the day. So it is not linked to the reward intervals in any way. There could for instance be 3 reward intervals but 30 participation intervals because of people joining and leaving the raid.

This many tabs will cause problems, as it is hard to get a good grip on how and when the participation changed. Therefor a timeline (orange) exists at the bottom. The timeline will probably just be a table with one column for every time interval, where every cell displays how many that joined and left since the previous participation interval. I would really love to build something like the concept image shown in another thread, but I don't think it's possible without me spending a lot of time on it (which I might try at some point, but not now). Clicking on a cell or column will open the corresponding tab in the complete participation.

Please feel free to give feedback and suggestions about it.

[impishfae]

(I'm on a posting spree today, apologies for the spam! My enthusiasm gets the best of me often and I know I'll be spending a lot of time using this wonderful tool)

* Make those horizontal sliders easier to find. Hitting that sweet spot has previously taken me five minutes of painstaking mousework. I've got it down to a fine art now, but my fellow dkp admin testers were amazed to discover it was resizeable at all.

* Swap the log/complete participation area with the rewards/intervals area. People's eyes in the western world read from top left to bottom right. And when using the tool (for me at least), I start by loading in a log, checking for errors up the top (maybe make the tab change its colour/background/text if there are errors present, or auto-switch to the error tab when a file is first loaded so the user can't miss it). Then I move into fiddling about with the intervals area, adding people in who are missing/removing people who weren't really there, etc. While I'm doing this, I'm keeping an eye on the rewards section/intervals & events, to check the effect my changes are having.

I only start modifying the intervals area once I have all the member participation correct.

* Alternate layout suggestions. Craziness lies within.

Actually, if you wanted to extend that notion further, consider the uses of the various areas...

** Participation is shown up the top (and I like the new reward participation vs event participation - that's totally awesome). In the main body you've got the reward intervals & the events on the left, and the members-per-intervals pane on the right. Do you really need to see the members-per-intervals at the same time you're looking at the reward intervals or events? Why not just bundle all that stuff together in a single tab?

So: Top bit has reward participation/event participation/loot/errors/global
Centre section has reward intervals/events/complete participation.

** Orrrrr... (ack! another idea! doom! This one is getting a bit far out and is probably a bucketload of work, but hey, you asked for suggestions )
Get rid of the complete participation pane. At least, not quite in its current form.
Use the reward interval pane to control all that detail rather than manipulating it separately. So: highlight an interval and the right hand area fills out with the members in that interval (which you can then add/remove members to). Highlight two intervals and right click to join them together. Highlight an interval and right click to split it.
Highlight two intervals and have a menu option to show the list of members who changed between them (maybe in a hover-tool-tip kind of dealio)

Include some sort of arrow button to show/hide the member area, so that when you're done getting all the members-per-interval correct, you can clear out that pane and get some real estate back to then just look at the dkp values for each reward interval.

Then in the events tab, you could either not display the members pane at all (since you now have the info up the top in the event participation tab), or, provide it in a read-only format, again with the show/hide arrow button.

** This provides more of a wizard-esque way of leading people through setting their data up. Have just one big-ass pane in the middle (with the status line down the bottom)
First tab: Global settings.
Set your raid name here, global bonus and maybe a summary of errors (x 'not a member' errors, y 'member missing from interval' errors, etc)
Second tab: Member Interval Participation
Shows members per interval. Allows you to add/remove members to an interval, join/split intervals. Shows the weighting per interval, etc. All that existing reward interval/reward participation/member participation panel stuff.
Also has a section at the bottom for Errors. Hidden by default if there are no interval-specific errors, shown if there are some.
Third Tab: Event Participation
Shows events and what interval they occurred in and which member is eligible to receive the event. All the existing event/event participation stuff.
Also has a section at the bottom for Errors. Hidden by default if there are no event-specific errors, shown if there are some.
Fourth Tab: Loot Distribution
Shows the set of loot, what interval they were looted in and who received it.
Also has a section at the bottom for Errors. Hidden by default if there are no loot-specific errors, shown if there are some.

Or alternatively yoink the 'errors' pane from the bottom of each tab and put it underneath the main tab and above the status line. Hide if no errors, show (with tabs for reward-errors/event-errors/log-errors) if there are.

* Wacky ideas about the suspected error panes
I'm always a bit nervous about hitting the 'correct me' button on the suspected error pane, since an 'error ' can be fixed in more than one way. Say you have a NotAMember error... You can either ignore this person for the rest of the raid (cos they aren't a member) or you can add them to their member list (cos they are a member).
Say you have a 'NotAMemberGetsLoot' error... You can add them as a member, you can leave them as not a member, or you can point out that you put a typo in the name and need to fix the loot.
And so on...

So maybe instead of just the generic 'correct' button, there needs to be a set of options for each error: "add this peron as a member", "ignore for the rest of this log", "change looting member" (which then gives you a popup dialog of the member list so you can point-click to find the right person and not have to worry about misspelling again!).

Also, the error pane doesn't seem to update if I add members to the member list using 'Edit/Member List'?

[Lokorin]