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We changed the arrangement of the tabs from vertical and on the left to horizontal and at the top. We were able to do this because we had a smaller number of tabs, and so only one row would be required. This proved to help the aesthetics of our interface, and also saved valuable screen real-estate. Our design is, overall, very horizontally centered. Left-aligned tabs would have forced the tables in Schedule, Quotes, and WatchList to shrink in size (thus reducing visibility), and would have made the home page much less visually pleasing.
Design Decision II: Drop-down Menus Replaced by Tables
Tables are ubiquitous in our new design: we opted away from drop-down menus and lists in the name of efficiency, visibility, and simplicity.
We originally had the market values for midnights presented as a set of nested drop-down menus (in the tab_ CurrentOpenTrades_). We replaced it with the table in the Quotes page. There were several reasons for this change.
First of all, we changed the way MidnightExchange ran in order to more accurately reflect the market. Instead of showing all the bid/asks for a midnight, their values, and their proposing parties, we chose to display only the best bid/asks (thus, the highest bid and lowest asks) and to preserve anonymity. This was an important and correct decision. The typical rational user need not see all the bids/asks on a midnight if s/he is seeking to either buy the labor for it, or sell his/her labor for it; rather, s/he only wants to see the best deal that s/he can get. Anything extra information would detract from both efficiency (more reading/scrolling) and visibility (harder to distinguish the important information from the information that the server only needs to know).
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Implementation
Describe the internals of your implementation, but keep the discussion on a high level. Discuss important design decisions you made in the implementation. Also discuss how implementation problems may have affected the usability of your interface.
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