We got a feedback from one of the clients for the Appointment module. The filter options in the Appointment lists under Manage Appointments doesn’t provide a great user experience.
Pain Point
Users not able to view the active filters easily. Once the user selects the filter criteria and applies, the Appointment calendar view on the right side is updated. If an user modifies the selection criteria but doesn’t press the ‘Apply Button’ filter and the user leaves the page. When the user comes back later to the same screen, the modification in the selection criteria is intact but the Appointment calendar shown on the right side is for a different Filter options and this leads to confusion in making appointment decisions.
Possible Solution
Approach 1 - Visual indication on the changes
Whenever the selection options in the filter criteria changes, highlight the Apply Filter Button (Possibly change the colour of ‘Apply Filter’ button). So that the user gets to know that the Appointment calendar panel is yet to be updated with the new Filter criteria
Approach 2 - Dynamic Filter
In this approach the ‘Apply Filter’ button will be removed. And the Appointment calendar panel will be updated as and when the filter criteria is changed.
We are looking for more suggestions/inputs in providing a better user experience for Appointment module.
Approach 1: In this approach, user will know that the selected filters are not yet applied but will not know what filters were applied and what were not. There is no way for the user to deselect the non-applied filters also. It would be good to show the difference between applied and non-applied filters also.
UX Best practices ranks Dynamic Filter over having Apply Filter button. Hence my vote is for Approach 2.
Adding to the better experience, i feel approach 2 is comparatively less complex.
@darius, you want to add anything here? It would be great if any UX person from community can help with this question. You have anybody in mind?
Before changing the appointments filter behavior, would like to reconsider if that would impact any existing users.
@pramidat Can we check with some existing users which approach would they find more convenient to use.