I have slowly begun some more prototyping for displaying records. One of the elements needed is an icon graphic for the concept of “more” which could mean “more elements”, “more details “, or simply “more information “. I would like to hear thoughts on conventions used that anyone feels would be more easily identifiable for our broad international user base. The “more” element might appear in a menu, a cell, or at the end of a set of columns. Thus “more” is essentially saying to users “OpenRefine is hiding some things currently in order to keep things organized and not overwhelm with too many elements just yet”. The size of the “more” element can be scaled as necessary and ideally would not represent how additional details are shown, I.e., it should not represent verticality or horizontal scope; so arrow forms are not appealing for this design need.
Opinions or mock-ups or doodles accepted!
@zoecooper do you have any opinions on that "more" concept towards a new OpenRefine design system? What's commonly used in journalism, news, science portals, etc.?
From online user Roland Bouman:
Hi Thad! I am not a designer, when I do design it is out of necessity and often things I think are intuitive are not understood by others. So beware!
I think a totally generic "more" is really hard, but I would probably go for ellipsis (...). Perhaps hard to distinguish from a "grippe" element so they probably shouldn't both be near each other on the screen.
If there are also other elements of cardinality on the screen that represent unit, I would probably use the context and find an icon that matches. For example, if the unit icon is a number 1, I might take a letter n, or perhaps infinity symbol for "more".
If the unit symbol would be a graphical bar, I would probably take the same icon but with 2, or better, 3 occurrences of the bar, arranged in some visually pleasing way.
Hi @thadguidry - thank you for tagging me here and apologies for my slow reply, I've just seen this now and want to jump in.
I've sketched a few options side by side - would be curious to hear any feedback?
Thanks for the options. Do you have an opinion on one of them as a preference?
Thad Guidry
I think I prefer the (...) icon at the bottom there.
My second choice, if I'd need to pick on, would be the three dots inside a circle.
