Feedback from Elias Brinks

General:

- I don't seem to have found any "Help" facility

- Please add a cancel option at all locations where a file can be uploaded. If upload is requested by error, there is no way to correct this.

- the tool provides a "smoother" interface than the old version and some of the annoying features have been remedied. The whole layout is also more pleasant. It responds faster, although the frequent reloads of the screen each time even the simplest of changes is made can quickly become irritating. It seems to be the same PST but with a more professional GUI. One way to vastly improve the user experience would be to find a way to reduce drastically the screen reloads.

- obviously, the philosophy behind the new tool is the same as that of the old PST. Now, imagine a newbie VLA user. Such a person will be able to complete several sections but will be completely put off by the "Sessions" section. Honestly, as a frequent VLA user, I'm at a loss! THIS NEEDS ATTENTION! The VLA shouldn't discourage potential proposers.

My suggestion here is that the information requested is restricted to the bare minimum which is required for the TAC. It shouldn't resemble a Phase II proposal preparation interface. Please, please make this more straightforward. Already the nomenclature is confusing, with "sources", "resources" and "sessions". Having also to decide on "repeats", etc., in addition to the above is simply too much.

Now for some details:

- From Dashboard --> News --> Telescope News if you click on an item, it gets you to a location outside of the tool. The only way to get back is then to hit the "back" button but this lands you NOT on the page you started from, but one higher up in the tree. It would be better if the new page would be shown "within" the context of the PST and if there would be a PST "back" function. This could also be a security issue as someone could move to a page outside of the PST and leave his/her machine. A "back" click now gets you back to the PST without re-authenticating.

- In Administration, it isn't immediately obvious that a click on an item will allow you to edit it.

- in Proposal: Hmmm...when giving a "return" this is equivalent to hitting Cancel; wouldn't it be nicer if this were a save? I guess this applies to the entire PST environment.

- in Authors: Is there an easy option to shuffle the "stack" of authors? Now the only way seems to be to delete authors and re-renter them in the desired order.

- in Sources: NED searches on NGC objects doesn't work; also, IC10 works, but IC 10 doesn't. I strongly suggest to get the same functionality on string recognition as in NED.

- in Sessions: It's not intuitive how to edit the part where it says Available Groups; only once one has clicked on a group or resources name will the other fields, for time and sensitivity, become editable.

- is it possible to get an overview of the sessions, i.e. have them all open? Currently, there is no way to see all of them; if you open one, the other closes. A work-around is to print the proposal, but this is painful.

- Printing: Asking a print of the proposal doesn't print any uploaded scientific case. Is this done on purpose? One could imagine a choice here: - print PST output only - print uploaded file only - print both

-- DanaBalser - 02 Nov 2007

This topic: Software > ProposalSubmissionTool > PSTFeedbackSeptember2007 > PSTFeedbackSeptember2007EliasBrinks
Topic revision: 2007-11-02, DanaBalser
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