Ajax Case Study - Simple Validations Reduce Costs/Increase Usability:
In a follow-up to his previous post, Jesper Rønn-Jensen looks yet again at business uses of Ajax technologies - specifically a 'case study' looking at one of his recent usability issues.
As a followup to my earlier post ‘AJAX performance stats, ROI, and business value‘, I decided that I’d share with you some considerations on a recent project I was involved in.
Anyways, I want to give you some of the details on why we decided to implement AJAX validations in this particular web application. We had a complex interface where the user had to enter a lot of information about a lot of users. In this particular solution, the typical usage scenario is that an employee has data about multiple users to enter: That could for example be name, age, social security numbers etc.
He mentions the two models that they looked at - the 'Edit one object at a time' idea and the 'Edit multiple objects at the same time' school of thought. For each, they give an example, including a sample screenshot of the method.
While both methods had their strengths, the real time-saver came in the form of the Ajax-based validations on the data that was being entered. Spotlighting an incorrect field with a red highlight reduces the guesswork without detracting from their entry work.
(Via Ajaxian Blog.)
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