[moneydance] 2007 Beta

[Christopher Le Dantec]

hey,

first off i want to say nice job. the subtle visual updates are well placed
and the new spending / budget info on the home page is very useful. that
said, i'm going to delve into a few interface issues / suggestions.

edit budget window

-in the table if i edit a cell and click OK the change is not remembered. i
have to move focus out of the cell first and then click ok. recommended
behavior: make sure any event, focus change, click events store the cell
value.
-the selection model is perhaps too 'efficient'. i understand that it's
faster to immediately place the user in cell edit mode but it makes the feel
unstable. recommended behavior: click once to select the row, single clicks
in a selected row activate editing for the cell under the mouse; allow for
multi-select of rows (makes it easier to calculate a budget and then clean
it up).
-what is the left most column in the table? there's not title and no cell
values.
-enable column sorting.
-add running totals at the bottom -income and expense. otherwise it's a crap
shoot if the spending is excessive.
-make this (and the budget manager) non-modal. it's impossible to research
expenses to include (or remove) from a budget without first closing the
budget window.

a suggestion more likely to be ignored :-) re-work the budget interaction
completely. drop the budget manager window and go directly to the edit
window. to do this, change the Budget Name field to an editable combo-box.
the user can select a budget they've created from the combo-box. typing in a
new name == renaming. the last item in the combo-box, blow a separator,
should be Save As. below the combo-box use the same + - buttons for adding a
new or removing the selected budget. if this is something you're interested
in, or you want more detail, let me know. i'd be happy to do a mockup. :-)

budget report and budget graph.

-it would be great if items / categories not in the budget showed up in the
report and graph. in the budget report adding lines for each cat. not in the
budget would help identify non-budgeted expenses / incomes. likewise in the
graph, adding segments that indicate amount not actually budgeted would help
identify holes in financial planning. the report could use italicized lines
for non-budgeted items. the graph on the homepage could use brighter
segments to identify non-budgeted amounts.

-in the budget report, under income, my budgeted income is 2600, the actual
is noted as -2900 w/ a difference of 5500. this seems to be a bug bcs my
income is actually +2900 so the difference should be 300. or maybe i'm
reading something wrong...

-the budget graph could do with some tool-tips. i'm not sure how to read it.
what does the black/red triangle indicate? the length of the bar is money in
/ out and i'm assuming that is mirrored by the total on the right? it looks
great but i need some scaffolding to understand it before it becomes
scanable.

expenses graph

-tool-tips please. :-) the colors start to repeat at 7 so it becomes hard to
see what's what. hovering over a colored segment in the graph should provide
a tooltip w/ the name and numerical value. maybe a tooltip is unnecessary
-you could highlight the item in the key below the bar. just something to
make it easier to inspect what a segment is actually representing.

once again, great job. the beta seems to be in good shape. my compliments to
the chef. :-) most of the above are usability / interaction nits that i've
come across in the first couple of days of use.

best,
Christopher

Interaction Designer
Ph.D. Student @ GT :: Human Centered Computing.