Usability is a key ingredient in a successful design strategy. By making information within your displays easily accessible, you enable your users to be more productive. Use the following guidelines to improve your usability.
Plan out your navigation strategy before creating any displays. For example, you may want to link a part of your process to a more detailed display - this should most likely be linked to via a hyperlink, rather than an item in the system tree.
Consider existing methods of display, and mimic their navigation methods to avoid user confusion.
Rank the importance of different navigational methods within your display. For more information on the navigational methods available to you, refer to the section Methods of Navigation. Try to keep a consistent navigation strategy.
Make note of the screen resolutions in use by your users. Create your displays for the most commonly used screen resolution.
Hide the System Tree tabs to increase the amount of space available to the display. However, before you hide these tabs, ensure your navigation strategy supports this.
Remember that users may be able to re-display the System Tree tabs, depending on the display and application preferences you have set. Therefore, it is recommended to allow enough space on the left-hand edge of the display for the two tabs to appear. By providing this space, you eliminate the need for scrolling the display and ensure that critical data is always visible.
Hide the run-time toolbar if it is enabled, to increase the amount of space available to the display. Note, however, that the toolbar provides scroll buttons that scroll the entire analysis display. If you hide the toolbar, you will lose this feature.
Consider whether or not you want charts and grids in your analysis displays to be modifiable. If you configure a chart or grid to be non-modifiable, users will not be able to modify a chart or grid in the run-time environment.
Allowing chart modification from the run-time environment allows users to modify the appearance of a chart. However, the user will not be able to create or modify pen/event groups without the necessary security privileges.
NOTE: Modifying a chart from the run-time environment does not mean the changes are saved. You may want to allow users to modify a chart and deny them access to save their changes. If this is the environment you want, make sure users do not have the security privilege to save run-time changes.
When you have decided on a set of rules, follow them consistently. For example, if you decide to show the system tree, make sure every analysis display provides access to it. If you suddenly violate this rule and hide the system tree, you create confusion among your users, which will lower productivity as they try to determine how and why the rules have changed.
