This is a VERY open ended question. For a certain project there will be a variety of situations where the user will need to be able to set a series of one or more thresholds. When a value gets above the threshold, a color will change. The goal is to make a control that will be useable in all the scenarios, but they are a bit fluid. As an example, the user might set the thresholds 10, 20, and 30, along with the colors Green, Yellow, Red. If the value is greater than 10, the color will be green, if the value is greater than 20, the color will be Yellow, and if the value is above 30, the color will be red. Where these colors are displayed is irrelevant to the question. The relevant part is that the user has to be able to designate one or more threshold levels along with corresponding colors. I have a design for this, but I'm not all that thrilled with it, so I'm looking for any other suggestions.
My design is to take the primary color bands that VS gives you (red, green, blue, orange, yellow, and purple). Add in No Color, and you have seven colors, which is good enough, as nobody will need to have more than seven thresholds (and generally only one or two, so seven is actually pretty extensive). Those seven colors are set as the backcolor of seven buttons in a panel. There is also another panel that is as high as two of the buttons. The user can drag a button from one panel to the other panel (or back). Based on where they drop the button, it will fit itself into the second panel. Therefore, they can organize the seven buttons in whatever sequence they choose. When they drop the buttons on the panel, I can either allow them to set a threshold at that time (via a second, small, form), or they can click on the button at any time to change the threshold value. The threshold value will be displayed as the caption of the button, and will go away if the user drags the button off the destination panel.
This will allow the user to drag over as many colors as they have thresholds (up to seven), organize them in whatever order they see fit, and set the thresholds either when they add the color to the sequence, or at some later time of their choosing.
The design looks ok, but I don't feel that it is all that intuitive, so I had to write a bit more of a label than I would prefer to try to explain to the user how to use the form. All they see is a series of colors and a rectangle, so the fact that you should drag colors to the rectangle just doesn't seem intuitive, and there is no suggestion of why other than the fact that the user should know what the heck they are doing when they get to the form.
I'm just having a hard time thinking of an intuitive way to allow users to designate a series of thresholds (1 to 7) and corresponding colors. If anybody has any alternative suggestions, I'd be happy to consider them.
My design is to take the primary color bands that VS gives you (red, green, blue, orange, yellow, and purple). Add in No Color, and you have seven colors, which is good enough, as nobody will need to have more than seven thresholds (and generally only one or two, so seven is actually pretty extensive). Those seven colors are set as the backcolor of seven buttons in a panel. There is also another panel that is as high as two of the buttons. The user can drag a button from one panel to the other panel (or back). Based on where they drop the button, it will fit itself into the second panel. Therefore, they can organize the seven buttons in whatever sequence they choose. When they drop the buttons on the panel, I can either allow them to set a threshold at that time (via a second, small, form), or they can click on the button at any time to change the threshold value. The threshold value will be displayed as the caption of the button, and will go away if the user drags the button off the destination panel.
This will allow the user to drag over as many colors as they have thresholds (up to seven), organize them in whatever order they see fit, and set the thresholds either when they add the color to the sequence, or at some later time of their choosing.
The design looks ok, but I don't feel that it is all that intuitive, so I had to write a bit more of a label than I would prefer to try to explain to the user how to use the form. All they see is a series of colors and a rectangle, so the fact that you should drag colors to the rectangle just doesn't seem intuitive, and there is no suggestion of why other than the fact that the user should know what the heck they are doing when they get to the form.
I'm just having a hard time thinking of an intuitive way to allow users to designate a series of thresholds (1 to 7) and corresponding colors. If anybody has any alternative suggestions, I'd be happy to consider them.