Five Things to Look for in a Data Collection Interface

Posted by Glenn Kletzky & Jason Klass on May 11, 2010 | Comments Off

With today’s technology, there’s no reason to settle for an interface that looks like it was designed in the 80’s. Here is a checklist of elements to look for in order to determine if an interface is going to increase the productivity of your workers and reduce your bottom line:

1. Touch Based. Touch-based interfaces increase user adoption and speed up workflow.
2. Large, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand buttons. Users shouldn’t have to squint to find the button they need and when they do find it, they shouldn’t have to wonder what it means. Extra points if you can still push the buttons with gloves on!
3. Color Coding. A color coded system helps train users for you by creating redundancy and familiarity which will also speed up workflow. Extra points if the design makes use of universally understood colors: green for “go”, red for “stop”, etc. Colors matter.
4. Animated transitions between screens. A screen that explodes out at you means something different than a screen that implodes away from you. A screen that slides in from left to right means something different than a screen that slides in from right to left. Such visual cues let users always know exactly where they are in a process without getting lost. Humans think directionally. After all, don’t we fill out forms from top to bottom? Don’t we read from left to right?
5. Visual Design. Meaningful images are faster to interpret than text or cryptic symbols. Look for an interface with easy-to-understand images paired with simple text–where you can scan a page and immediately tell what you can do on it without having to read a raft of tiny text labels or hieroglyphics. When simple text is matched to meaningful images, the redundancy it creates is as interpretable as it gets.

Since the interface is the thing your workers directly interact with on a day to day basis, it can have a profound effect on your ROI. But if you use the checklist above to select software, you know you’ll be investing in an interface design that is bound to make your mobile workforce successful.