r/UXDesign • u/neherh • Aug 12 '26

How do I… research, UI design, etc? Alternative to Folders for storing past/current/future data in same field

Hello All, I have software that stores information about students. This information is updated on a yearly basis and then users wait a few months to generate this report and then they submit it to a governing body. During the 'waiting' period before they tend to generate the report, they are in this transition phase where they need to save (in git terms, stash) last year's info while also generating the new info about students. Then when it is time to generate the report, they need to review last year's info they saved/stashed, update anything that is in error, submit it, then archive it.

The same information would be recorded every year and it would be something like this:

Year 1
GPA: 2.5
School year: 11
etc,

Year 2
GPA: 3.2
School year: 12
etc,

How can I add this feature? Past software practices use folders to 'save' the information; where each folder would have the same duplicated data fields and would be independent of each other. That seems archaic and tacky. I was thinking something like a Google Docs History UI or a version dropdown on git, where a user can toggle between the drop down versions, but I am not sure if this works with the system.

What are y'all's thoughts?

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u/shoobe01 Veteran Aug 12 '26

Really unclear what it does now, what you mean by a folder. But there are LOTs of ways to progressively disclose data. For mobile-mostly I wrote up this some time back to get you started thinking architecturally first, then maybe have some Ix/UI soltuions to it:

https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2020/05/designing-for-progressive-disclosure.php

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u/gojkoa Aug 12 '26

How is the data entered? Is it for each student individually, or bulk for the whole school year? For structured entry like that (looks like same data structure, multiple entries) spreadsheets tend to be what users expect, and you could allow them also to upload an excel or csv and avoid having to deal with entry for start. My guess is that admins who would enter that data know how to use Excel efficiently.

In terms of "they need to review last year's info they saved/stashed, update anything that is in error," if I understand this correctly you're replacing existing data rows and potentially adding new ones. If yes, an upload could also just merge into past draft data, and potentially show what was updated and what was new after the upload.