Portfolio: Digital Equipment Corporation printer management UI design

Digital asked Interaction Design to work on a product to manage printers over a corporate intranet. (Digital was bought by Compaq, which was bought by HP. This was a very early Web application, from the 1990s.)

I collaborated with a graphic designer on layout, color and typography as well as a visual language for printer status icons. We brought in a writer to create an index of the application, which gives quick access to product features.

Quick access to important information. We designed the pages for busy people who need quick access to information about a lot of printers. Immediate information about status is the most important item, so every page shows a summary of the current printer's status in text and graphics. The icon provides quick feedback and is a link to a page with complete information.

Print Wizard page detail

Each page shows brief printer status.

Easy access to all product features. Frames don't have to be hard to use. The left frame has a fixed menu bar for instant access to commands. The right frame has the status and management interaction. This keeps the menu in the right place. Some of the data on the right side of the application could be very long, so using frames was doubly useful.

Unlike many Web applications using frames, every page has a unique URL. This avoids a common problem where clicking Reload returns to the home page of the application. It also allows users to bookmark pages, which can't be done without unique URLs.

The menu is always visible on the left even while the user
scrolls the data area on the right. (See it full-size.)

Context-sensitive help, including an index. Print Wizard has an index and context-sensitive help. The index has a complete list of settings used in printer management. Instead of page numbers, there are links to pages where values are set. This gives users quick access to commands and settings without requiring them to read help text. Of course, help is available for those who want to read details about the features.

Users look up settings and commands in the index
then click to go right to the page where it is used. (See it full-size.)

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