Front Panel UI Design

[bilalskd]

Hey there,

I am looking for some feedback on the front panel I have designed. Any feedback regarding use of tab control or what other things to use to make the front panel visually appealing would be appreciated.

Thank YOU.

[GerdW]

Hi bilalskd,

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@bilalskd wrote:

I am looking for some feedback on the front panel I have designed.

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It looks quite ok…

My design rules:

• Use as less fonts as possible (regarding font, size, bold, italic, underline, colors).
  I would NOT use underlined+italic control labels. The underlining of "Simulated Acceleration (X-Axis)" looks inconsistently…
  And I prefer non-serif fonts for technical stuff, like your UI!
• I prefer numeric values right-aligned in controls…
• Why is the Signal type item also underlined? (Check spelling, too.)
• Is there a reason to have some numeric values in red and italic, while others are shown in black and regular?
• The stop button usually doesn't need a label…
• The unit of frequency is "Hz" instead of "HZ". It's technical content and we all use the same SI units, don't we?

[raphschru]

Hi bilalskd,

In addition to what GerdW said, here is what I would do:

• For your application to look more finished, you can hide the toolbar and the menu bar (unless the VI has a custom menu) while the VI is running.

         

• Set a proper Window title (not the VI name that ends with ".vi").

         

• No need for a Stop button, handle the "<This VI>.Panel Close?" filter event, so you exit the application by clicking the top-right cross, like any normal application.

        

• The LED indicator named "Averaging Indicator" sounds weird. Maybe "Averaging?" with a question mark could be better.

         

• Even if that's not visible to the user, it's always good for any VI to have a proper icon, not the default one.

         

Regards,

Raphaël.

[LFBaute]

I can recommend you to watch Hunter's GLA Summit 2024 presentation....

The LabVIEW UI of your dreams is going to give of a very good insight of what you can achieve

also very good tools to use ...

- MGI Panel Manager is going to make your life easier, if you use DQMH Framework there is even one for DQMH.

- Pane Relief, If using Panes and splitters, install from VIPM ...Pane Relief...is so much easier to work with panes and splitter with this tool

[NIquist]

You spelled "square" wrong.  😉

[Yamaeda]

I agree with all the points above, and reemphasize the underlining of the texts needs to go, they just clutter it.

Otherwise i like it, it looks clean, professional and slick.

[dsb@NI]

Overall, well done! I wish the Sound and Vibration Toolkit examples looked this nice.

You have already received some great feedback.

In addition to the feedback that you have already received, have you considered cutting redundant features? For instance, FFT and Averaged FFT don't seem to offer independent value. You could display the traces on the same "FFT" graph for better comparison, or the user can just set Averaging to 'None' or No. of Averages to 1 to toggle averaging off.

For controls that are related (but not necessarily redundant) does changing one value automatically adjust the other? For instance, is Lines of Resolution (LOR) always # of Samples/2.56? How important is it for you to enforce this?

Group related controls. Specifically, move the averaging indicator to the Averaging Info section.

Curious: do you prefer the use of the tabs to separate acceleration/velocity/displacement? did you try a selector that displays the a/v/d data on the same graphs?

You have received positive feedback from the forum users. Who is the intended user for your UI? Does this UI enable their workflows?

[paul_a_cardinale]

I like to make my tab pages different colors so you know at a glance which page you are on.  E.g:

[raphschru]

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@paul_a_cardinale wrote:

I like to make my tab pages different colors so you know at a glance which page you are on.

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I never knew it was possible, you just made me discover the option:

Regards,

Raphaël.

[antoniobeta]

Amazing! For four years I have been thinking that changing the color of different tabs was impossible!