The design team has been working on ways to improve your experience with products based on the Revit® platform. We have been conducting focused research as a part of our design process. This research gives us the opportunity to test ideas, observe interaction, and receive feedback. This has tremendous upside but can be limiting too; we can only include a relatively small number of users, during a relatively short period of time, and, invariably, we always want to ask one more question.
Now for a bit of an experiment...
This blog lets us reach a larger audience over a longer period of time. You’ll find some design concepts below. We are sharing these with a hope that we will receive thoughtful and constructive feedback from our readers that influences our design process.
To be clear, these are ideas and sketches we use to frame our research. We are not making any promises that they will make it into a future version of Revit-based products.
We need both qualitative and quantitative feedback. To help us quantify your feedback*, please take this survey <closed 9/9/09> after reading the entire post. Further, we welcome any further suggestions* in response to our ideas, which can be submitted using the Comments feature provided on this blog.
On to the design ideas...
Idea 1 – Use of available space
In this first set of tab mockups (Figure 1), notice the subtle differences from the Revit 2010 UI. This design takes advantage of the wider screen real estate (these mockups are done at a width of 1440). This idea uses the horizontal space provided by wider monitors by making the icons larger and spreading them out more, providing larger targets and greater legibility.
Idea 2 – Modify tab revisited
In this mockup (Figure 2), the Modify tab is moved to the last tab position. The tab contains the most frequently used modification commands and several commands common to many workflows. Please provide feedback regarding the contents of this tab.
In this design, the contextual panels are merged with the Modify tab, so that your general modify tools, as well as your specific tools for an object exist on the same tab. These items are separated from the consistent items using color. Figure B shows the tab converted to the Modify & Place Wall contextual tab, figure C shows it converted to Modify Walls when a wall is selected and figure D shows Modify Text Notes.
An important aspect of this design is keeping the first 8 panels, up to and including the Match panel, of these tabs consistent and tools stay in the same position. Each time a tool is presented, it is in the same location.
Idea 3 – No labels on common tools
To help increase the number of tools presented on the static section of the contextual tabs (see Figure 2), we are investigating no labels for many of the items on this tab. The tooltips would still be available.
Do these ideas work for you and your workflows? How would you change them?
Please go to the survey <closed 9/8/09>) and give us your feedback.
Thank you for your help.
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