How we can reorganize Drupal admin items within the D7UX framework
by Roy on 01.07.2009
Talking for two days straight during Utrecht Ux sprint ruined my voice, but it did accomplish an important thing: Somewhere on Sunday morning, Dries, Mark, Leisa, Bojhan and me finally got to a point that we knew and understood that we were talking about the same thing. And that this thing, the d7ux framework, might actually work, too.
Here's a summary of my understanding of the global concept. It introduces some of the building blocks that are in the framework and shows how they relate. Then the focus turns to the admin header, specifically how the top row of links provides us with the necessary entry points to reorganize Drupal's administrative items.
Comments
wow, you have found your green pen!
Never really lost it either. It was in my pocket all the time…
Nice! Thanks a lot. :D This really helps frame the changes so that people who weren't able to attend the D7UX sprint can understand them, and so we're all on the same page about the changes being proposed.
This is really interesting, and my immediate thought is this makes a lot more sense than the system that is currently in place.
As I see it, this proposed structure provides a new way of accessing the same basic administrative components.
Given that many sites roll their own admin UI targeted for site-specific use cases, is there a way to turn off/bypass these changes.
For example, on several sites we brought live last year, an omnipresent top-level nav did VERY poorly in user testing -- additionally, it didn't mesh with the design of the site.
One of the things that is nice about the existing admin UI is that it can be as noticeable or as unobtrusive as you want. The top-level admin header will be useful in some cases, but not others. As such, it would be great to have a choice as to whether or not we use it on a site.
And don't get me wrong; the existing organization of admin features is very daunting for non-technical users. But that was also easily addressed by building custom admin UI's targeted for specific use cases. I would argue that a decrease in flexibility would translate, overall, into decreased usability over the broad range of sites where Drupal is used.
Very exciting to see this take shape... can't wait :-)
Bill: Thanks for watching. Leisa just posted some more rationale behind this IA here: http://www.d7ux.org/information-architecture-strategies/
The point is exactly the one you make as well: currently, the Drupal IA doesn't really help anybody, the proposed IA and admin header focusses on helping the newbie/evaluator finding the stuff she's interested in quickly.
As such, it isn't really targeted at experienced Drupal developers. Like you say, they override and customize anyway. So, you'd just override this then. Wouldn't you agree that this at the very least provides some sane defaults that will help that part of the audience that can make Drupal grow even further and take it to the next level?
Please read http://www.d7ux.org/information-architecture-strategies/ , there will be another, more detailed post from Leisa soon. Thanks again!
Bill Fitzgerald:
How I understand from Gabor, the Admin Header is a module that you can just switch off (don't even have to override it). You don't have to use it and build any kind of fancy user/power-user Admin section or just use admin_menu. What will be changed in core though is the general organization of the admin pages into categories.
Thanks for sharing this! It's great to hear some explanation behind the mockups I've seen, and I must say it looks really good. I was at first skeptical to another layer of abstraction, but seeing how well it will be implemented it looks like a big gain. Well done to all of you behind this!
I'd be interested in hearing what's next steps on the roadmap, if there is one. And being your student for the Icon project last summer (hi Roy!), on what level do you see icons being used within this UX framework?
(Note to self: I need to hang out on #drupal-usability more :P)
Thanks for the video, it's great to get a good update on Drupal 7 UX.
- Sean Bannister
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