harleytuck wrote on Wednesday, January 06, 2016:
Hi Robert-
I looked at the demo (http://demo.open-emr.org:2105/openemr/interface/login/login_frame.php?site=default) and it’s really impressive! It is so refreshing to see a unified style all through OpenEMR, and one that looks so good.
I realize I write as if I think I’m some kind of UI authority; I’m not, I’m just opinionated. And I’m not a php dev so I don’t look at interface functionality from the perspective of what php can do and how it does it. Mostly I’ll only mention things that caught my eye, not everything I looked at.
My 1st impression when the main page loaded: it’s got a clean, neat, legible windows-like appearance except for the color palette; I love it. Don’t get me wrong; I’m diehard Linux but this style looks like what the rest of the world thinks is professional.
I discovered pretty quickly:
- can’t manually adjust or uncheck/disappear the bottom pane
- I click ‘Home’ button and the screen blanks except for a few buttons; had to log out/ in to recover (pic 01.png attached below)
- In most all the screens trying to manually resize the browser window smaller resulted in the inner panels disappearing (04.png)
Loaded some demo pts from a PrintAPatient sql file no problem.
Making an appt-
- ‘Add new event’ popup: active and inactive tabs same color- underline on active tab is not enough to make obvious to me which one is active.
I think ‘Flow Board’ is sliced bread. It’d be really popular to be able to print that out by date range, into the future but default today. Ok, now I see it in the report section. I get the reasoning of having it there but I have a hunch that plenty of users would say, “I have the information right here, why can’t I just print it out?” Food for thought.
The current pt identifiers and the encounter history dropdown are not in the bar at the top. Was that intentional? If so, I think it’s a serious mistake since the way OpenEMR is now, it puts so many frequently performed activities just one click away instead of having to go back to the nav menu and do several clicks. Also, in many modules that display is the only identification of the current pt.
The ‘Clear Active Patient’ button at top left in the current UI serves as a convenient method of completing many activities and prepping for the next one. I don’t know how it works from a dev point of view but it seems to clear some data that would otherwise get carried over into the next operation.
Many module screens don’t have a title or they’re different style/ font than the rest of them. Haven’t listed them all here.
I manually created a new pt and also pulled up one of the imported demo pts, then tried to create a new encounter in the nav menu but got: 06.png. The left nav menu ‘Create Visit’ item doesn’t seem to activate.
Pt’s home display
- tabs along the top replacing those links is v attractive
- don’t see benefit of making user click an extra time to get the basic home screen display; why not just have it appear when pt is selected? That’s where most of the clinical work happens and requiring one extra unnecessary click over hundreds of pts a day the irritation factor can add up.
- I’d like a little more differentiation in color of the objects. Having the text area highlights (e.g., the Clinical Reminders) the same color as tabs and buttons seems wrong
- also the active/ inactive tab issue is worse here- really need to tell easily what the active one is.
Insurance screen
- having all the text area labels in red- does that mean they’re required, and if present why red? (02.png)
- When I hit save or cancel it returns to base pt screen w/ no widgets displayed, so you have to pull up the home screen, then the insurance widget again to get back to where you left it.
- Insurance and Demogs buttons both pull up the same display with both Ins and Demogs widgets showing.
- In the Report, Documents, Transactions, Issues and Ledger screens (from buttons along top) there is no visible indication of what pt you’re working on at the time because there’s no pt info display at top. Also, no way to get back to the pt home screen besides browser back arrow (03.png)
Patient/ Client/
‘New/ Search’ - making a new pt manually I find I can’t see the white lettering on light grey of the DOB calendar (07.png)
Fees/
Fee Sheet; Payment; Checkout - can’t make an encounter to check this
Billing
- LOVE the right hand links replaced by buttons! You could take the button captions out of their brackets?
- EDI History- aww, it isn’t included in the UI changes? I guess it’s a standalone chunk of code, isn’t it?
Batch Payments
- the active tab thing.
- this payment entry panel does take up a lot more screen space than the original and while it looks good, I wonder how it’ll work in real life without constant scrolling.
Procedures/
Configuration - different style title
Admin/
- the new theme displays very nicely in these modules
Globals
- the dropdowns and text areas do look so much more tidy and uniform like that, though it seems like too much whitespace.
- the active tab thang.
Address book
- Seeing how small the information is that goes in the text areas, seems like a lot of unused whitespace at the top. Consider making them 2 rows x 2 columns of objects?
Practice settings
- good, replacing the links with buttons.
Rules
- With the browser window so wide it’d be easy to click on the wrong “Reminder” link in the column along the right edge. That /vs/ the current display of having the Reminder column just a few spaces to right of widest rule name.
Forms
- The display is attractive but the green and pink margins indicating enabled/ disabled are too small and pale for me to easily make out. Brighter more saturated colors would probably do the trick.
Reports/
Blank Forms
- all submenu items’ popups are in the old style. Any chance of applying the new theme to them and other popups?
Miscellaneous/
Authorizations - doesn’t display anything
Address Book- no title saying what’s displaying
Batch Com- curious about the vivid blue-green band across the top. Looks attractive though the shade seems from a different palette. Consider using that idea as the title for all forms?
‘Order Catalog’ and ‘Documents’ have a different title style than the rest of them.
Bloody good job!