Status Area

Problem

You want to provide status information to users, but you don’t want to interrupt their main activity.

Solution

Use a dedicated area to provide status to users in a manner that will not interrupt them.

Context

Your application in many cases provides status information that a user may be interested in, but is not important enough to interrupt them (e.g., status of loading a web page).
The type of status information is not something the user will need to see right away.

Rationale

Many users do not want to be interrupted by status information because in most cases, the status would simply say everything is fine. On the other hand, users want to be able to quickly glance somewhere on the current screen to see the status.

For example, if a web page seems to be loading slowly, a user may want to be able to just glance at the status of the page loading to make sure the web page is at least responding. A second example is that many users want to be able to look down and see the security level status when providing private information on the web; e.g., many web browsers use specific icons such as a locked padlock to show that the transaction is secure.

This method of providing status in a non-interrupting manner is really best for those cases where the user will initiate the interaction. This should not be a first choice when you are interested in getting the user’s attention quickly.

Implementation

Example of the Status Area UX pattern.

The above example taken from Word 2007 highlights how you can combine the Command Area pattern with the Status Area pattern in order to add the ability to interact with the status information rather than just displaying it.

Example of the Status Area UX pattern.

In addition, Word 2007 allows users to customize what information is shown in the status area.

Help Me Get There

Infragistics has some tools that can jumpstart your efforts to implement this pattern. Broken down by technology, they are as follows.

Windows Forms

You can use the NetAdvantage for Windows Forms WinStatusBar to implement this pattern. If you download the NetAdvantage for Win Client bundle, you can find a sample in the WinForms sample browser called IG Paint Sample to see it in action.

Examples

The primary example for this pattern comes from Microsoft Word 2007, showing how both information and actions (e.g., using the Command Area pattern) can be useful to users in a status area.

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