Lovely PDF Creation
I was talking about some of the work that IDEO’s (they’re a design consultancy) done in the past with a friend and while browsing their site ran across a really, really nice PDF creation tool. Especially interesting since it was a topic I was pondering a few months ago as we were starting to scope out a similar tool for a website of teacher resources.
IDEO To Go has a few navigation methods that wield a lot of power — At a glance you can see the full scope of what’s possibly available for the PDF. You can start to populate the PDF with elements either by selecting from the choices along the left-side or by individually clicking the project pictures. True, the pictures don’t have a lot of meaning before you click on them, so there’s some minor room for possible improvement there but I’m guessing that space limitations are the defining limiter in this display. As elements are selected through the choices, they highlight in the picture field and each of the individual pictures can be added or subtracted from the final result through the checkbox and the top of the project blurb on the right.
It was fast, incredibly easy, and actually customized. As I made choices, I could see the impact of that decision. So, a few good lessons here:
- Let people see the full range of available choices (in museums, we’ve found that people are often frustrated with a digital experience when they can’t figure out how to access a feature that someone else is using.
- Give progressive feedback (instead of making choices and then seeing any result).
- Have controls that let you make a few broad decisions, but then make granularity available to the power user (if PDF creation has actual power users, I suppose).