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The size change of the nodes in the review tree should give better visual feedback to the user than a mere number, however it may lose some points in learnability as the positions of the nodes may change with the number and distribution of the reviews received. There is also an opportunity for increased messaging by showing the rate at which a position's reviews are going up or down by changing the color to green for positive, grey for neutral and red for negative. This could indicate whether it was just one summer that was bad and they are improving as opposed to wide variance in reviews.
The most common error we expect with this designis miss-clicks on nodes causing the user to descend the search tree a level. This is mitigated in two ways:
- There is a breadcrumb at the top of the page showing how the user navigated to their current location
- Each node also has a link leading back to its parent
Other possible errors include applying an incorrect filter, but this is mitigated in the same way as a miss-click.
Minimalist Design
This sketch design is the “minimalist” approach for a UI of our idea. The main goal in designing it was to minimize the amount of effort needed for any one action the user would like to carry out. It also minimizes the amount of different pages and windows the user has to navigate through when doing these actions through the use of our "Nav-Bar" which will always be accessible (it scrolls with the scrollbar). Selections from the Nav-Bar will update the main window accordingly so that the user, in essence, never goes to a new webpage.
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