Interaction principles
The AIMMS UX toolkit gives a lot of freedom to design applications. However, we recommend to follow the interaction principles described on this page for the benefit of end users. This will make future AIMMS apps easier to use and the suites of apps more consistent.
Interface elements
App developers have the following main interaction elements at their disposal:
The Canvas, populated by Widgets: display information and input data.
Menu bar: navigate between pages.
Action menu: trigger page-specific actions
Side panel: contextual pages in the entire app (global)
Workflow: block that allows clustering of pages in consecutive steps.
Principles about Pages
The UX toolkit offers the flexibility to create an unlimited number of pages in a hierarchical tree structure.
We aim to use no more than 3 levels of hierarchy and up to 40 pages for an application. More pages will confuse the user, and will make the menu bar very large. If more than 25 pages are needed, consider if this can be solved by splitting the app into two applications.
For more information on the menu and pages, see the chapter on the App Menu Bar.