[katello-devel] icon to represent "virtual guest" subscription

[Malini Rao]

Tom,

Thanks for reaching out to us about this. I take your point about wanting to easily be able to scan for the type of subscription in the left list but as Kyle mentioned, the green/ yellow/ red icons are universally (and specifically in Katello as well) used to represent status  of whether something is on/ off or as an indicator of health or activity. So using these icons to represent anything else will shake the common expectation and also be inconsistent with other areas within the tool. Specifically in this case, the use of these icons is even more dangerous because it is not a stretch to associate these icons with subscription status and so these can easily be misunderstood.

The effectiveness of visual indicators in terms of communication and scan-ability in a list is inversely proportional to how many indicators exist per item.  Additionally, if we start introducing icons for types of subscriptions here, then we need to do that consistently everywhere else for all other objects and sometimes it is very hard to come up with visually meaningful icons that represent subtle variations of different objects that may be pretty abstract to begin with. At this point, icons will become nothing but visual noise. 

That said, I still think your core requirement is valid and it can be addressed in other ways - For e.g, we can have list display filters to see only one or more type of subscription. This can scale for more types and be applied across many scenarios consistently and become a list feature. The filters could also be a mix of attributes - so for instance, I should be able to see all subscriptions created through consumption in a particular status ( Nice to have).We should also include the type as an attribute that displays on the rows on the left list for sure. 

Thoughts?

-Malini





----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom McKay" <thomasmckay at redhat.com>
To: "Kyle Baker" <kybaker at redhat.com>
Cc: katello-devel at redhat.com, "Matt Reid" <mreid at redhat.com>, "Malini Rao" <mrao at redhat.com>
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 9:37:15 AM
Subject: Re: icon to represent "virtual guest" subscription



----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kyle Baker" <kybaker at redhat.com>
> To: "Tom McKay" <thomasmckay at redhat.com>
> Cc: katello-devel at redhat.com, "Matt Reid" <mreid at redhat.com>, "Malini Rao" <mrao at redhat.com>
> Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 9:24:06 AM
> Subject: Re: icon to represent "virtual guest" subscription
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> > UXers,
> > 
> > I am currently using Green icons for subscriptions with Yellow
> > icons
> > for those created through consumption of a subscription (ie.
> > "virtual guest" subscription). A third possible member of the list,
> > though it is not currently shown, is custom product subscriptions.
> > 
> > If you have better icons for these cases, let me know.
> 
> I think we need to evaluate whether or not we need icons at all. The
> green, yellow, and red icons traditionally show status and that is
> how they are used on the Systems screen. Though what you are
> describing are icons that represent the types of subscriptions. Are
> these all of the current subscription types?  -
>   Current Subscription
>   Subscription created though consumption
>   Custom Product Subscription
> 
> Do we foresee more types of subscriptions in the future? Is it also
> important to show the status of a subscription (expired, not
> expired) in icon form?
> 
> > 
> 

I am in favor of keeping some colored icon indicator as to the type of subscription. It makes it very easy to scan the list. (In fact, having more colored aspects of the left list in various places should be considered, imo.)

I don't know if there are more subscription categories other than those three, but I'd not rule it out completely.