Falcon Navigation USD Draft
Objectives
Strategy
Year 1
Year 2-3
Process for reaching a navigation solution
Discover
Design
Test
Deliver
Falcon Navigation
Quicken Environments
Activity Centers
Detail Pages
Menu Bar
QuickTabs
MDI Toolbar
Status Bar
What it could look like…
Appendix A: Analysis of existing navigation systems
Menu Bar
Icon Bar
Global Nav Bar
MDI Button Bar
QuickTabs
Message Region
Account Tabs
Activity Bar
Home Pages and Activity Centers
Appendix B: Comparison of Quicken navigation to Money navigation
Appendix C: Map of the current product
Appendix D: To Do List
Priority |
Objective |
Definition |
|
|
H |
Comprehensive |
Interface allows
access to all feature spaces of the product. |
|
|
H |
Can’t be turned off |
The fundamental
navigation to feature spaces should not be easily turned off. |
|
|
H |
Single click access to
favorite features |
Minimal number of
clicks to access user’s favorite feature spaces. |
|
|
H |
Hierarchical /
Organized into groups of related features |
Interface expresses
and reinforces Quicken’s feature organization. |
|
|
H |
Goal-oriented |
Interface expresses
goals and tasks as well as places or features. |
|
|
H |
Learnable/consistent |
Minimal effort to
learn the interface; Initial learning carries through the rest of the
product. |
|
|
H |
Intuitive |
Interface is nearly
transparent to user. It guides user’s discovery and meets user’s
expectations. |
|
|
M |
Easy to customize |
Customization takes
minimal effort. |
|
|
M |
Customizable ordering
and startup display |
User can customize the
startup environment and ordering of favorite feature spaces. |
|
|
M |
Efficient and targeted
clicks |
Click targets are
obvious. Clicks are kept to a minimum. |
|
|
M |
Region for universal
feedback |
Interface incorporates
a status region. |
|
|
M |
Natural (contextual)
links |
Interface reveals
links to related areas. |
|
|
M |
Reveals more of the
product |
Interface shows “hard
to find” feature spaces to the user. |
|
|
L |
Appropriate use of
screen real estate |
Every element
deliberately placed according to principles of information design with the
intent of maximizing screen efficiency. |
|
|
L |
Macro functionality |
Maintain existing
macro capabilities. |
|
|
L |
History list |
User can navigate back
and forward according to the session’s history of feature spaces. |
|
|
L |
Feature promotion |
Region to promote new
functionality or less used features. |
|
|
L |
Multiple slices |
Interface accommodates
more than one organization of the product. |
|
We realize that we cannot resolve every existing in problem in Quicken; however, this navigation solution must not be another “quick fix” that will only last a single product cycle. It is important to take time up front to approach the problem from two perspectives: a general view and a detail view. This thinking will allow us to prioritize our initiatives and develop both short-term and long-term plans for improving Quicken’s navigation.
Year 1
° Work within the constraint of existing feature spaces
° Establish a framework for the product
° Remove extraneous navigation systems
° Create a comprehensive navigation system that reflects the framework and serves as stepping stone toward deeper feature changes
° Prioritize feature space modifications
° Implement some feature space change
Year 2-3
° Continue to populate navigation framework
° Resolve feature spaces based on year one solution
Discover
° Analyze and learn from historical Quicken navigation systems
° Compare Quicken navigation to Money navigation
° Create a map of the current Quicken product
Deliverable: repository of charts, diagrams, outlines, related resources
Design
° Articulate Quicken organization
° Restructure Windows menus and accelerator keys
° Replace existing incomplete navigation systems with at least one fundamental navigation system
° Implement a secondary navigation system to partner with fundamental system
° Determine role of home page, activity centers, and detail pages within new navigation system
° Explore the opportunities of a permanent status region
° Explore the need for and create at least one site map
° Explore the need for a history list
° Accommodate advances in the help system
° Explore a range of possible new looks for the product
Deliverable: USD draft including a schedule of milestones. Paper prototypes describing a range of solutions
Test
° Iterations in the usability lab
° Iterations based on feature team feedback
Deliverable: Identification of problem areas and elegant solutions. Translate to objectives for next iteration of design refinement and testing
Deliver
° Specification for navigation system
° Documented implementation guidelines and consulting with feature teams
° Specification for look and feel implementation
° List of “big bang for buck” areas of visual refinement
° Prioritized list of feature space integration
Quicken Environments
Quicken offers broad functionality, which is displayed and manipulated through a collection of tools called “feature spaces.” A feature space is a single screen workspace that is devoted to a particular area of functionality. A feature space used to be its own MDI window and now has a unique QuickTab. Write Checks and Security Detail View are examples of two different feature spaces.
As Quicken grows and gains new functionality, we continue to add new feature spaces to the product. Feature spaces are the building blocks of Quicken, but that does not mean the interface must expose this to our customers. Our customers have been trained to look for feature spaces, but this is a software-induced way of thinking. The natural way of accomplishing a set of tasks begins with a driving set of goals. How can Quicken’s user interface help customers map their goals to our tools?
The UI team identified all existing feature spaces and maintains a list of feature spaces proposed for Falcon. We then grouped Quicken’s feature spaces and related tasks by areas of activity such as banking, investing, household, reporting, planning, taxes, small business, and help. By establishing these “environments” we provide a simple first step toward accomplishing a task. The customer has a goal in mind and anticipates which environment that goal lives within. Because there are a finite number of environments, we offer a clear set of alternatives and make that first decision as simple and successful as possible. The user interface will consistently surface and reinforce this organization.
With the input of marketing and other groups in the company, we must decide if this is the best set of environments. We must be prepared to maintain these environments through future product cycles. To address the future of Quicken as a financial platform for third parties, we must articulate when and how a third-party can create an additional environment specific to its business.
Activity Centers
The Activity Centers are a prime way to surface the hierarchy of the product. Tornado’s Home Page and Activity Centers took the first step toward combining data presentation with task articulation. Customers use the pages to view related data and directly link to an activity, or tool. In Falcon the Activity Centers will be a much more prominent and useful part of the product. We will change their names to reflect the final group of environments and we will populate them with improved and compelling components.
The Activities component will list common activities for that environment. The Analysis component will list customer questions as identified by marketing. Phrasing can be more verbose and the display can take advantage of information design techniques to organize and prioritize the tasks in relation to one another. The transitory nature of pages also offers the right context for adding new tasks or questions based on ongoing customer studies.
The Account Summary component lists accounts for that environment. The first icon links to the Account Info page. The second icon shows whether the account is online-enabled. Each account name links to that particular register. The Status column shows alerts and reminders related to each account.
Detail Pages
With the advent of “pages not features,” we gained the ability to organize tasks within a goal-oriented context. In the future, components will not only provide quick views and access to tools, but they will allow users to directly manipulate their data. This improvement to components and addition of “detail pages” further reduces the need to directly work with feature spaces. The Activity Centers will provide the links to all related detail pages within each environment.
Menu Bar
Quicken’s main menu bar has historically contained access points to all Quicken feature spaces. These menu items display the name of each feature space. The menu bar also lists certain “commonly used” functions, which are displayed as task-based phrases. It has also been used as a vehicle to promote new or “hard to find” features and activities. From year to year we change the organization of the menu bar as we add new features and establish new “navigation” schemes.
Usability studies show that our customers look in the main menus if they are not sure exactly where to find something. They have been trained to expect the menu bar to provide access to “everything” in the product. All feature spaces may be represented, but all possible actions and tasks are not. There are thousands of tasks and combination of tasks within Quicken and it is not realistic to list them all in the main windows menus, and it breaks user expectations to list only a few.
We need to have clear reasoning for building each menu. We’ve developed a menu structure that we hope to maintain beyond a single product cycle:
°
File menu - contains
file-related commands. Examples include Import, Restore Backup, and Exit.
°
Edit menu - contains
editing commands. Examples include Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Find.
°
Organizer menu -
accesses global Quicken tools. Examples include Financial Center (Home Page), One-Step-Update,
and Calculator.
°
Banking menu – accesses
Banking features and launches Banking-related activities. Examples include
Banking Center, Write Checks, and Create New Account.
°
Investing menu –
accesses Investing features and launches Investing-related activities.
°
Household menu –
accesses Household features and launches Household-related activities.
°
Taxes menu - accesses
Tax features and launches Tax-related activities.
°
Business menu –
Home and Business SKU only. Accesses H&B features and launches H&B-related
activities.
°
Planning menu - accesses
Planning features and launches Planning-related activities.
°
Reports menu - accesses
the Reports Center and/or runs Reports.
° Help - contains access to Help features and Intuit services.
We've developed a set of guidelines to articulate the design to the team
and to help us place new menu items through the development process.
How
does something merit placement in the menu?
·
If it is a feature
space.
·
If it is one of the
top five activities for an environment.
·
NOT if it an action
specific to an individual feature space, as in “Delete Transaction.”
·
NOT if it is
promotional -- all promotion is placed in an Activity Center page.
·
NOT if it is a detail
page -- detail pages require the context of an Activity Center.
How do
you decide on the right menu?
·
This should be
straightforward if the item merits placement in the menu system. All feature
spaces reside in an environment; each environment directly maps to a menu.
·
Heather is keeping
a master feature space list and menu list. Make a best guess, let Heather know,
and she'll consult with the engineer, marketing, and usability to verify the
location.
How do
you decide on the placement within the menu?
If an item falls within the Banking, Investing, Household, or Taxes menu,
there are only three options:
·
Center - not
applicable since we are not adding new Centers
·
Feature Space -
feature spaces are listed in topical order
·
Activity -
activities are also listed in topical order
If an item falls in the
File, Edit, Organizer, or Help menus, they will be determined case by case.
QuickTabs
One of the reasons customers find MS Money simpler to navigate is there is only one way to access tools. Money customers are forced to choose an environment and then choose a specific tool. While this makes initial access simple, it does nothing to facilitate access for proficient users. Money offers a Favorites menu which bookmarks some of the customers’ favorite features, it they are more than a single click away. QuickTabs provide a system for recording the movement through feature spaces in Quicken while allowing users to control their tabbed environment.
The UI team explored the possibility of combining the initial navigation with the customized navigation. After numerous discussions, we felt that a combination system would be too confusing. Rather than have the initial navigation compete with the customized navigation, we will separate them into separate systems, each with a clear purpose.
To fit within the new environment scheme, we will maintain the functionality of QuickTabs while improving their organization. Falcon will have a permanent set of QuickTabs, one for each environment. As customers navigate to feature spaces, the environment tabs will be populated with the names of those feature spaces. To allow for the same customized tab environment, feature spaces can be closed. But to reinforce the underlying organization of the product, the environment tabs cannot be closed.
MDI Toolbar
Every feature space contains an MDI toolbar with actions specific to that feature space’s tools. While striving to integrate these activities into the features themselves, we will continue to support the MDI toolbar. It will include buttons for actions, as well as dropdown menus for feature space-specific reports and How Do I lists.
[what happens to navigation buttons on the MDI toolbar?]
Status Bar
Falcon will include a status bar to show whether the customer is currently connected to the internet, the date of the last update, whether there are alerts or pending transactions, and fortuitous navigation questions. The status bar may also be a mechanism for invoking a global update, or a way to retrieve the download summary.
Goals
° Constant feedback
° No hunting for time critical / task completion items
° Better implementation for download summary modal dialog
° Better use of download progress minimization
° No performance impact
Date
Attributes:
° Includes day of the week.
° Writes out year with four digits: Monday 2/22/1999
Last Updated / Update progress
Attributes:
° Shows that information is being transferred to and from Quicken…NOT that you are connected to the internet.
° Uses icon + text to show states.
States:
° At rest – Last updated xx/xx/xxxx
° In progress – Updating “xxxx”
° Complete – Download summary xx/xx/xxxx
Alerts
Attributes:
° Reveals new and critical alerts.
States:
° At rest – Inactive (muted)
° In progress – Alert state (color change)
° Click takes user to Alerts and Reminders feature space
Fort Nav
Attributes:
° Works just like current fort nav.
° Cycles on feature space change.
A navigation system is a mechanism that provides access to features. We began by analyzing the existing navigation systems and articulating their strengths and weaknesses.
1.
Menu Bar
Strengths of the Menu Bar:
° Always available
° “All else fails” access
° Opportunity to present hierarchy of product
Weaknesses of the Menu Bar:
° Mixture of access to feature spaces, launch dialogs, and invoke actions sets false expectations
° Used as a mechanism to promote features
2. Icon Bar
Strengths of the Icon Bar:
° Bookmarks to user’s favorite features/tools
° Custom order according to user’s process and needs
° Single click access
° Macro ability
° Establishes targets for clicking
Weaknesses of the Icon Bar:
° Was not maintained as Quicken matured
° New features were not added resulting in user failure to find features/tools and complete tasks
° Look was not updated to maintain icon bar’s integration into Quicken resulting in user perception of usefulness of icon bar
° Allowed for too many items and did not resolve issue of more icons than would fit on screen size, resulting in loss of single click access and breaking click targets
3. Global Nav Bar
4. MDI Button Bar
Strengths of the MDI Button Bar:
° Single click access to repetitive actions
° Offers consistent presentation of Reports, Options, and How Do I topics across feature spaces
Weaknesses of the MDI Button Bar:
° Used to raise awareness of functionality
° No guidelines established for how and when to place actions on button bar
5. QuickTabs
Strengths of the QuickTabs:
° Require minimal set-up effort of the user
° Produce a “breadcrumb trail” of features and tools accessed by the user
° Enable single-click access to feature spaces
° Create a custom user environment on start-up
° Allow custom ordering according to user
Weaknesses of the QuickTabs:
° Create a false equality among features and tools
° Inconsistently assign tabs to features spaces (sometimes graphs expand within same tab; sometimes graphs become their own, new QuickTab.)
° Arbitrarily set a limit of “active” feature spaces
° Enforce a close model without addressing the save model
° Conflict with back/forward tool on global navigation
° Do not reveal reordering ability
6. Message Region
7. Account Tabs
8. Activity Bar
Strengths of the Activity Bar:
° Organized Quicken into major topic areas
° Task-oriented (on the way to goal-oriented)
° Took a positive step toward blurring the distinction between local tasks and online tasks while keeping them discreet
° Supplied a compelling target for new users (if all else fails, click on that big, colorful icon)
° Provided a mechanism to prioritize features and tools according to most commonly used by customers
° Provided a mechanism to promote features
Weaknesses of the Activity Bar:
° Unclear implementation goals resulting in unclear user expectations (eg. by allowing feature promotion according to marketing vs. feature prioritization according to customer processes, the use of activity menus started to break down)
° Clunky choice of ship defaults (fly-over menus appearing when user only meant to rest the cursor) resulted in customer aggravation
° Unfamiliar model of menus expanding upwards resulted in more awkward mouse movements
9. Home Pages and Activity Centers
Strengths of the Home Pages and Activity Centers
° Reinforce the Quicken’s organization by major topic area
° Reinforce the relationships among Quicken features/tools
° Create natural links to feature spaces from components
° Integrate local and online activities
° Promote hard-to-find features
° Provide level of customization and personalization
Weaknesses of the Home Pages and Activity Centers
° Related activities set false expectation of comprehensive access to features