Which way of representing folders do you prefer?

Our design team is busy working on developing a new foldering system. Users will be able to store their exams, etc., in folders. There will be various levels of permissions around folders. For example, users at a district level might create a “district” folder and use it as a central repository for exams used district-wide. They might opt to make this folder “read only.” In other words, classroom teachers across the district could open/view exams posted in this folder, but they could not edit them in any way.The extent to which folders are permissioned would be configured by each district to best suit your needs. Our design team is also exploring how best to allow sharing of such content across districts (for places like Michigan where users are collaborating across many districts.)

Users will also have a personal folder they can use to store exams that they have created. Users will have the ability to copy/share exams they have made with other users – placing copies in other folders that they have permission to do so.

In general, users would have the ability to create and name new folders at their level of the organization. For example, classroom teachers could generally create folders within their building, but not across the district. There will be options to override these defaults.

Our design team is exploring a couple of different ways of visually represent these folders on the screen, and we’d like your feedback, comments and insights. For simplicity, I’ll call the first design “Folder Design 1,” the second design “Folder Design 2,” and the third design (you guessed it) “Folder Design 3.”

For now, ignore the color schemes and fonts used in these examples. Those will follow the final “look and feel” of the application itself. Focus for now on the way the folders are displayed/organized on the screen.

(Hint: If you click on the visuals below, you can see a larger view of them. Use your browser’s Back button to bring you back to this post.)

Folder Design 1

The example (above) keeps the folders (and exams located within them) in a more in-line structure. Users would click the toggle to reveal the exams located in the folder.

If the list of exams was long, then “pagination” controls would appear at the bottom of the screen, allowing users to navigate from Page 1 to Page 2, etc.

Folder Design 2

In this (above) design, folders are placed at the left. When a user clicks a folder, the list of exams within it would appear on the right side of the screen.

Folder Design 3

In this example, the folders act more like a “floating panel,” which users can hide or view. This example shows the panel hidden from view. Below, an example with the user making the folder panel visible:

Post your comments and let us know what you think of them, and more important, which you think Edusoft and DataDirector users would prefer.

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