Design Overview
Our design explorations and prototypes that we conducted as part of our research. We discuss how we framed the design problem and document the various approaches through which we attempted to solve the problem.
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Referencing Cells
Referencing cells is one of the core actions in a spreadsheet app, and it was one of the first things we considered when designing Bean. Most of the actions in a spreadsheet make use of some kind of references to different areas within the spreadsheet, and making this action easier could help reduce friction from the user's workflow. Referencing cells is now primarily done using a verb-noun paradigm, to use Jef Raskin's terminology. Here, we tried to flip that order to create a noun-verb paradigm, which is arguably friendlier and natural for a beginner user.
Referencing a Single Cell
In a verb-noun approach, which is the default in spreadsheet apps right now, the user selects the action (verb) first, that is referencing the cell by typing an '=' symbol and moving into a reference/formula mode and then selects the cell (noun) that needs to be referred.
In contrast, in a noun-verb paradigm, the order is flipped. In the solution we went for, the user selects the data (noun) first, that is, the cell that you need referred to and drags it to the target cell. There is no 'reference mode'. Instead of shifting attention from the data to the target cell and then returning to the data that needs to be linked, this allows the user a natural way to link a cell to its target cell with at least one less attention shift. This makes it natural to the way a beginner user might think and help reduce errors the modes might bring in, as Raskin argues in his book, The Humane Interface.
The user holds a modifier key and drag the cell to the target cell to create a
reference. They can also scrub on the
numbers to make adjustments to the value.
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