With powerful applications you run into design challenges which defy rules of simplicity. I was working on a hefty networking management system application which spit out unfathomable amounts of log data. There were several different classes of users who needed individualized views. I didn’t have all the scenarios documented, so I had to make a general purpose interface that would accommodate all of them without knowing exactly what they would be. The solution was a design pattern directly from Excel. I scored this off Balsamiq’s mockupstogo site. The table design data filter and sort pop-up window offer a compact helping of functionality that would be totally cryptic to users except for the fact that they see it every day already in one of the most common productivity apps in the market.
By the way, the wireframe app I’m using is also from Balsamiq. Awesome. I’m likewise digging the UI Patterns and Patternry libraries of solutions to common interaction problems.
