Does the merge page need a third column?
I've been doing some merges and have concluded the following:
A. I really like the single page format.
B. I really like that the chance of deleting any type of information has been removed and we are only left to consider which of two options we want to keep where the two records have different information. Deleting information or relationships from a record and merging two records are such different tasks that letting both occur at the same time has too high of risk, even for experienced users, of unintentionally losing information.
C. I do not like having information that will be preserved greyed out such as the death date and place being in faint grey when only one record has death information. Being greyed out just looks too much like it is being deleted. Having the radio button grey to show that it cannot be turned off is fine.
D. After picking and choosing what information is being kept in the merge so that there are blue dots scattered here and there, it is just too hard to see clearly how the merge is going to turn out. I would suggest having a third column that shows the result of the merge which actively updates each time a radio button is clicked. This would also clearly show what information from the duplicate is being preserved.
Here is the current page next to a Photoshop mock up of what I mean. This also includes changing any grey text for black (click to enlarge):
Comments
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Incorporating style elements from the Merge Analysis View so the two pages look the same might make both pages easier to work with.
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@Gordon Collett again, you have gone above and beyond. Thanks for the great ideas!
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