lklyne
commented
2 months ago Background
There's a couple of related ideas we can chain together to improve the row building and filtering experience. The overall goals are to simplify how rows are built and filtered, make filters more dynamic so they don't get stale as a mission model shifts, and add the ability for people to drill down and customize them if needed. We don't want to expose a lot of that complexity up front, but the complicated bits should be easy to access.
Current issues
Some of the pain points with our approach to filtering that this design direction aims to address:
- We don't support custom filters, making it tricky to build meaningful rows with multi-spacecraft missions #671
- Filtering is generally tedious, settings are buried in the row details, and our multi select approach doesn't scale well to thousands of activities. #592
- Because filtering is limited and tedious, it's easy to get a row that is focused on information specific to a task. With large plans, this means lots of information on the timeline that isn't relevant, creating clutter and visual noise.
- Row building isn't set up for exploring the mission model. #634. We have a broad list of all activity types in the mission model, but these aren't tied to the process of creating row filters. This section can only be used to drag and drop or add an activity instance to the timeline, an uncommon workflow as instances are typically placed using procedural scheduling. Exploring resources is even more limited as the only section to view what's in the mission model is from the small popover ui in resources filtering.
- Activity filters are static and don't leverage logical categories like
subsystemorall. After selecting individual activity types, that list doesn't stay up to date as a mission model shifts. The current workaround is to use a text search and batch add for activities, which works well if a subsystem has a name included. https://jira.jpl.nasa.gov/browse/ECGDSITD-517 #973"There's no capability to select all the AVS activities, short of clicking on each one-at-a-time. This is onerous but possible because all the AVS activities begin with the string "AVS".
- The hierarchy and labeling of layers within row details doesn't match the system. We've made improvements to the timeline rendering so that activities and resources show up in a logical way: all activities pack or group together and don't overdraw. And there's a default stacking that supports most use cases: lines on top, activities in the middle, and x range charts on the bottom. The concept of layers may not even need to be surfaced when building a row.
Proposed solutions
1) New browse panel: a better way to browse activities and resources (heavily inspired by the workflow in raven)
- Dedicated space to browse and filter activities and resources
- Filter using
text includesorsubsystem tag - Quick actions to add results to a new or existing row. Preserve current action for adding an instance to timeline
- Multi select to add single items from filtered results
- Future considerations
- similar workflow for external events
- More logical grouping or hierarchy in list
2) Improved filters in row details
- Filters from browse panel are carried over here. What's specified in
text includesorsubsystem tagshows a dynamic list of results that stay up to date with the mission model - List the activity types that match the filters for immediate feedback
- For each resulting activity type, show filters based on the type's parameters. For each type, these filters can be chained together to build queries like Param: Spacecraft = A OR Param: Spacecraft = B.
- Stretch / maybe not needed: When expert filters are displayed, show a list of the resulting instances for quick feedback on what the filters are doing. This could be more visible
- Future considerations
- save filters so they can be re-used
- parameter filters on a group
3) Clear up hierarchy in row details
- Two sections for activities and one for resources. (and in the future events)
- Resources are changed between line and x-range in their settings
Open questions + design
- Settings panel for activities and resources. How do we integrate the current filters?
- How do we handle layer naming?
- Empty state for filters from row details / adding a new "layer" from here.
- Details around boolean logic and populating parameter list
- Dealing with enum / hierarchy parameters (not sure the name for this)
Design files: https://www.figma.com/board/PE4EJhU1GM7eEeJOyfdN3I/Aerie-Filters-and-Row-Building?node-id=0-1&t=9YbmVWV1sPhJOqlj-1 https://www.figma.com/design/gsWLcy9UuqSQVqbyHf4Lw6/AERIE-Filtering%2C-Activity-UX%2C-Timeline-Density?node-id=885-65354&t=5O7Q5GIEuaSAPokb-1
dandelany
Overview
There's a request to have more complex filters to drive what activities show up in an activity layer. This would enable users to create more focused rows that reduced clutter and kept things focused on the task at hand. For example, a row could be built by a few related subsystems where a certain parameter was met, or where a specific tag was included. This approach would allow further refinement after dragging a group of starting activities on to the filters.
Feature request