I am designing a site where you can search for a service, and each results displays a service details page. I have come to the fork where I have to decide whether to use just one view, or whether I have a simple and advanced view. The site has two primary users: volunteers and researchers.

The details page has 54 separate pieces of information to display, which I have categorised in a way that I think makes sense (to be displayed in tabs). Some of these are dates, others are addresses, paragraphs or could be a word.

Should I have a simple and advanced view to cater to these two user types? Or is it best to keep just one view? Either option will have the tabs containing categorised content.

  • This is a "it depends" question. Right now there's not enough information to determine whether 1 view with additional info for researchers make sense or whether 2 separate views make more sense. It boils down to how much additional information need to be shown and whether the additional info can neatly fit into the same sections or if the two groups have different mental models and thus requires different ways of viewing the data. – nightning Apr 30 '15 at 17:49

Both in one interface

Sounds like you have a great candidate for a "drill-down" scenario. Provide a high-level, simple view into the data and allow users to drill down for details.

Also provide a switch in the interface to change the view type to higher density, like a grid/list view option. Here's the control seen in Google Drive:

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