Design and interface

[wujastyk]

There are functional issues with the new Panditproject upgrade, and we're all working on those. Those are the most important thing.

But I'd like to address the human-interface issues. The new design of the interface could be improved. First, it is too large and spread out. Big empty areas of screen are punctuated by large, repetitive icons and headings. The actual data is presented as a visual afterthought. The design style is centered, with wide empty margins to the left and right of a small column of actual data. Here is a screenshot, with the size reduced to 60% so that the text is not too big for comfortable reading on screen:

If you half close your eyes, the issues are immediately obvious. The Contents bar at the left is unnecessary; it repeats what is in the centre column. At the very least it should be folded-away with a user click. Probably it is not necessary at all. The most important parts of the screen - the record data - are the smallest.

Here is a mock-up of some alternative display ideas: It takes 3/4 of a page:

There is also some typographical history to be aware of, that can be used to help readers. There are two major publications that readers over the last half century have learned to use in order to absorb information about manuscripts, authors and works. These are the New Catalogus Catalogorum and Pingree's Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit. Typographic design is all about responses to history, and legacies of visual interaction. You have an audience out there of readers who are used to the visual design of NCC and CESS. Those designs can be a source of influence the visual design of PanditProject. In CESS especially, the author and typesetters gave a great deal of thought to how to concisely present a large amount of information. I personally dislike some of their choices (small caps, inadequate use of vertical and horizontal space), but they also succeeded in many ways too. Most important, they set a visual standard that is embedded in the visual habits of decades of readers. PP can leverage that, as well as the design of NCC and even some of the design of PanditProject 1.0, to which users have become habituated for some years.

[roikedem]

Thanks for that insightful comment, Dominik, I forwarded it to Yigal and to Ilan, our UX/UI designer.

[ybronner]

Dear Dominik, thanks for this good comment. We did want to leave some "real estate" on the side for future purposes, but perhaps we overdid this. We will look into these issues, as Roi said, together with our designer. More to follow.