The Midax Graphical User Interface (GUI)
Anyone familiar with Microsoft Office with its current GUI would be very much at home in the Midax application. Similarly, the concepts of MySpace and the tailoring of your personalized greetings web page have influenced the front-end design of the system.
We didn’t just do that so that the look and feel would be familiar to a new user: we took that approach to see how can we make the user more productive and how can we personalize the configuration for a single user so that it reflects exactly what that user needs.
Sample screenshots
First, we created My Forms. These are the panels or pages in the Midax application that a given user uses on a regular basis. So we allow the user to create if you like, his personal job menu. Next, we allow the user to configure standard screens so that only data fields of interest are displayed and those, in the sequence that makes most sense for that user.
Take an example of that in a core application, such as product file maintenance. The master panels to support that application run into more fields than you can shake a stick at, but guess what, only a fraction of them are used for a given vendor/product combination. So with Midax, you tailor a screen that is applicable for that vendor and call it whatever you like: vendor X product file maintenance. Map the sequence of fields to the way the vendor presents its information and now file maintenance is a cake-walk.
Take another application, such as price hosting. Use wild card selections in a grid format to select a range of products and display only those columns of interest. Then mass replace data in the grid. Unless you belong to those for whom font size 6 and 30 columns to a page is your definition of ease of use, making data easier to look at is going to make you less likely to make mistakes.
Create one-off views or save the format to be used again in My Forms!
Extend that concept to My Reports and now you get to see only those reports listed that you want, parameterized in the way you want to see them. Go one step further than that and have Midax time the production of said reports to a time and place that suits you, which may be your desk top printer, so they are waiting for you when you get in of a morning or saved in a spreadsheet format in a specified directory waiting on your what-if calculations. Or have them emailed to you, so that you are truly in synch with your business.
The secret to good design is to make a system powerful, while making it all look so simple.
