One of the biggest problems with risks and issues is the fact that they appear in a dry, uninviting list view, little differentiation between one and the next, the only semi-useful point of reference being an item’s position in a list. Oh yes, I remember, the one at the bottom of page two about environments. It would be great if there was a bubble view of the world, each risk or issue appearing as a bubble. (I’m thinking hovering bubbles that move slightly with time to indicate their dynamic nature.)
Bubbles could be coloured based on their severity (or maybe size indicates severity), risks appearing slightly differently than issues (maybe a slightly different shaped bubble). And the more granular details of an item could be revealed on hover or click, the standard view merely giving the key information. Two items could be associated with one another by dragging between them, and the system would deal with the positioning to make the resulting connectors as unobtrusive and sensible as possible.
I’m thinking something like the Pandora interface (if I remember it correctly), but with risks and issues instead of musical artists. Different views would allow you to display based on age, track, only display the high-severity items etc.
The whole thing would be driven by a structured database (or even a spreadsheet, heaven forbid), but this new view would bring a project to life.
Thoughts?
