Scenarios

Querying on the transactions within an account

Jessica would like to see a detailed listing of all the transactions that occurred within an account in her department. After performing an inquiry into the department, she sees a listing of all the accounts along with their adjusted budget, year-to-date activity, and available balance. All of the data pertaining to the first account is shaded with blue and the account number text is highlighted. She tries double clicking on the year-to-date data for the account she is interested in, but this brings up a calculator. She quickly closes this window and next tries double clicking on the account number. Unsuccessful again, she finally single clicks the Detail Transactions button at the bottom of the screen. This brings up a new form with the information she was looking for, although she notices herself squinting at the screen. Almost all of the text on the page is in regular black print, except for that in the Amount field where it is greyed out. Worse yet, the blue shade is on the record she is trying to read making the Amount text even fainter.

Claims Analysis

Blue shading of a record:

+ indicates the account is selected and in a different mode than the others
- makes the text harder to read
- not obvious how to move the shaded region
- confusing with two types of selection: shading and highlighting

Calculator design feature:

+ could be useful in a financial program
- most financial information provided involves totals, not requiring a calculator
- not an obvious result of a double click action

Text coloring:

+ distinguishes amounts from other data in the record and form
- difficult to read the most important information
- frustrating to users

Highlighting feature:

+ distinguishes a field from others in the record and form
- it is unclear what the purpose is
- encourages double clicking on fields which produces not obvious results

Results of a financial inquiry

+ includes fields that contain task-oriented data
+ produces results in an expected table format, similar to a spreadsheet
- include fields that contain extraneous data
- include fields that are confusing and not obvious to users