Having a mature and good-selling Windows desktop application, we are focusing on improving the user experience for the next release.
One thing that I try is to get rid of multiple nested modal dialog like e.g.:
The reason for having those multiple levels of dialogs is to show the user as few options as possible to make the application as easy as possible to use.
As a downside, for power users this is usually way too much "clicking" until they are able to achieve a result.
So my question is:
Is there a possible design alternative to those nested modal dialogs so that:
- Novice users still have an easy-to-use UI?
- Advanced users can perform tasks without clicking through serveral nested dialogs?
(The application is a .NET Windows Forms application developed with Visual Studio .NET 2010 and DevExpress, in case this matters)
Answer
One possible solution is to progressively show more details as users select items and sub-items. The benefit is that the initial ui is still clean, while getting rid of extra panels and buttons.
You can still keep your initial page with the "configure" button, even though i would try to eliminate it, if possible.
Initial View
User Selects an Item
User Selects a Sub-Item
I have successfully used the above strategy on a heavily utilized windows application.
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