* *** COMMENTS_2016-11-08_LAPTOP_QUICK_GUIDE TXT - 7 Sep 2016 14:46:31 - JKNAUTH Below are my comments on the VAST Laptop Quick Guide. I have not yet had a chance to work with a VAST laptop; more comments may be added after I have had some hands-on time. From the new QG it appears that the user interface has been simplified; that's certainly good. From just the QG documentation, I cannot get a good overview of how the buttons are placed, etc. Maybe the upcoming online tutorial will help with that. Laptop Quick Guide (9/7/16) ------ ----- ----- Page 2, bullets at bottom for "fast and accurate searches": As in the 1/16/16 (SOSA) Laptop QG, there are warnings to use the Tab and Enter keys instead of the mouse. In my comments on that old QG I had asked if this was really true and pointed out that the rest of the manual seemed to be saying just the reverse. Those old questions still apply for the new (VAST) manual. Note that on pages 4 and 5 the user is first told to use either the key or the mouse (nothing about avoiding the mouse). Then a few sentences later on each page only use of the mouse is mentioned, not the key at all -- just the reverse of what is said on page 2. Are the page 2 bullet warnings accurate for VAST (if they ever were for SOSA)? If not accurate, delete them. If accurate, make the rest of the manual consistent with the page 2 warnings. As I said in my SOSA QG comments, I had never seen any problem using either the mouse or the keys. Page 4: I assume on the Voter Info page, somewhere would be shown the current vote status and other warnings: VOTED ALREADY, ID REQUIRED, something like "CAN VOTE" (= SOSA's green checkmark), etc. The sample image does not show where this would be. Page 70 of the 2016 General Election manual mentions some on this, but the laptop QG should as well, if not more so. It appears that in VAST all the small, ambiguous SOSA icons for such information have been eliminated. That's progress. However I hope such VAST alert messages are highlighted better than the General Election manual page 70 example shows. Otherwise they may get overlooked. Typo nit: On page 70 of the General Election manual the text above the image says "VOTER HAS ALREADY VOTED", but the image says 'THIS VOTER HAS VOTED ALREADY". Page 4: See Page 2 comment about key vs. mouse use. Page 5: See Page 2 comment about key vs. mouse use. Page 5: Will there now be one of these large, mostly duplicated entries for each ballot style available at an address? In a primary there may be as many as seven or eight with the current party structure if 17 vs. 18+ is relevant for the election. On the other hand, for a general election as on 11/8/16 would there be just one entry and the party field would be left blank? However this type of display would appear to solve the problem that existed with the SOSA Street Search result display that seemed to imply that a UNA voter could be given only an NP ballot. With the VAST display (if I am reading between the QG's image lines correctly), the HT official will be forced to make a sensible choice for a UNA voter (DEM, REP, LIB, or NP) and not fall into an NP-only trap. Wildcard Facility -------- -------- I gather that the SOSA wildcard facility has been deleted and replaced with some sort of automated wildcard. I haven't seen it yet, but from the little I have heard it sounds like this: As you start typing, the system shows the closest thing in the database for what you have typed so far -- sort of like what Windows Explorer provides as you type a fileid in a Windows Explorer window; the cursor goes to the first entry with those character at the start of the fileid. That's useful, but provides a lot less than the SOSA wildcard which would let you tell the system to ignore certain parts of the name when searching, for example if you weren't sure of the first few characters of the name, but did know the characters after that. We found the full SOSA wildcard facility to be very useful, as described in some recent postmortem reports. When I have access to a VAST laptop, I'll experiment and give feedback on what has been gained or lost. VRN Spacing --- ------- Unfortunately it appears they ignored my suggestion for spacing the digits of a displayed VRN. For example from http://jgkhome.name/WakeBOE/BOE_Wish_List.txt "Display voter registration number (VRN) using spaces, similar to a credit card number: #### #### ####. Internally, in the database, it can be kept in the compressed format, but in forms (for both output and input) and on computer displays it should be spaced to ease readability/entry." Jeff Knauth