Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Control Panel Design #2

OK, after only one day of sleeping on it and asking for some opinions over at BYOAC I've decided to redesign the control panel just a little bit to make it more Bella friendly. My first thought was that having the Exit button all the way to the right might not be the best idea because my right hand will be constantly moving over the action buttons and could still accidentally hit it at an inopportune time. My next redesign was to just flop the admin buttons on the top row like this:

I like the new placement of the Exit button but I really don't like where the other 4 admin buttons ended up. The right side of the control panel looks too cluttered in this configuration. However, several people over at BYOAC answered my request for some criticism and suggested that I keep the Exit button on the left and the admin buttons on the right but line them up vertically. Genius!

I also moved the action buttons and joystick to the left a little so my right hand wouldn't be resting where the admin buttons are. I might have to make the control panel a bit taller but I think I have the room - as it stands now 6.5" might be tight for four buttons because I need to leave at least .75" on the bottom to accommodate the panel for the front of the control panel.

I really like the current state of the control panel and I'm going to make a mock-up out of MDF to test it out (so of course this is still subject to change!).

Thanks for looking!!

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