d7ux

Towards a more better managable modules page

Roy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:30:41 +0000

Towards a more better managable modules page Roy 01-07-2009

The modules page is a typical example of a long list that gets hard to manage pretty quick. The categorization is not ideal, with big modules providing their own category and a quickly growing 'misc' section.

The usability tests have shown that after installation, modules do not provide clear starting points to where you can find their configuration pages. Same goes for the new permissions a module might expose. No clear indication that there are new permissions and no clear pointers to where to find them.

http://sprint.drupalusability.org/content/design-module-page summarizes the main issues with this page:

Finding functionality once a module is installed
Finding functionallty a while after the module is installed
Finding functionality (with no knowledge of modules whatsoever)

In general, this gives us two areas of attention:

Managing the big list of modules as a whole
Finding related tasks per individual module

For the latter, we need to show more info per module without cluttering the interface. Finding related tasks per module is something the accordion concept (yes, accordions, I mixed up my musical instruments there) could help fix this by showing links to configuration and permission pages from within the context of the module itself.

During the UX sprint we discussed ways to make it managing the big list itself easier. The main idea is to provide 3 top level boxes for modules to live in: New, Enabled and Disabled.

Let's take a look at how this would help solve some of the problems:

Box 1: New: This would make it pretty easy to find the module you just installed on the page. You'd find both enabled and disabled modules living in this box. Of course, we'd still have to provide messages on other admin pages so that you know you have to visit the modules page at all.
Box 2: Enabled: It seems sensible that below the list of 'New' modules is the list with 'Enabled' ones, no? These are the ones that provide the parts you built your site with.
Box 3: Disabled: For the modules that are installed and fully configured or have been enabled before, but are (kept) disabled, well, you probably don't want to have them clutter the top part of your screen.

Yes, but…

What about the categories?: It would still be handy to be able to filter on everything 'media' or 'ubercart' yes. Propose to make the categories a filter as a select list on top of the page.
What about modules that consist of multiple modules, like panels, views, ubercart? What if I enable some of them, some not?: Yes, the New/Enabled/Disabled segmentation would seperate these 'sub-modules' from each other. Currently these modules are grouped into their own category. I don't expect the seperation to be a real problem. On first usage (after installation) the module family would be shown in full in the 'New' box. After configuration, the category filter would allow you to see all panels, views, ubercart related modules together again.
This would mix up core and contrib modules!: From the users perspective, does that really matter? Again, the Category filter would come to the rescue in providing a filter to show 'Core modules' only. In itself it is not a very relevant disctinction to make.
How would the modules within each box be sorted?: Sorting alphabetically, although about as helpful as 'random' in most cases, seems to be the most logical option here for the New and Disabled boxes. For the enabled section, which would normally be the longest list, we can re-use the categories from the configuration page (the new name of what currently lives under /admin but reorganized).

Any other edge cases I missed? Any other problems that might arise from this new grouping? Point them out please and talk us through it. If the concept still holds after discussing them, then just this new grouping of modules in New / Enabled / Disabled boxes would be a worthwhile improvement for the modules page.

d7ux

drupalplanet

#d7ux_8_0

How we can reorganize Drupal admin items within the D7UX framework

Roy — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:18:35 +0000

How we can reorganize Drupal admin items within the D7UX framework Roy 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.

d7ux

drupalplanet

Utrecht UX Sprint, recap of day 1

Roy — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:58:50 +0000

Utrecht UX Sprint, recap of day 1 Roy 28-06-2009

Everybody seemed to have read and understood most of the briefing email and sprint website because there we were, 20+ Drupal peeps showing up at the lovely OneShoe office, on time.

As expected we took an hour or so getting settled, finding team mates, asking for wifi passwords etc. Bojhan ran us through the plan for today and then the teams sat together and started attacking their issues.

Around one hour in we got our first tiny patch committed by Dries. Always good for morale.

Damien, Gabor, Konstantin, Steve and Thijs had a room on their own. Paving the way for Form Builder to land in core as our Fields UI. As far as I understood this involved lots of making and breaking stuff. But, the D7 port of the form builder module is there and ~~landing jQuery UI seems not too far away as well~~ jQuery UI has landed. It's just great to have these guys in the same room and see how focussed they are in their approach. Excellent.

Marieke, Thomas, Berend and Willem worked on text improvements. Another great way to find out about Drupal functionality weirdness, even when you are a long time insider. Bojhan and I reviewed their work after lunch, mostly stressing the 'make it even shorter' point. Among others, the shorter content type descriptions got committed, changing them from lengthty paragraphs into shorter yet more helpful sentences. Also, fresh beginnings of a text style guide for the Drupal interface

Together with Leisa, Mark and Nasir we discussed the modules page. Yep, one of the bigger issues. As per usual, we needed to talk about two hours to get to the point where we could agree we were agreeing on the same things (mostly!). Leisa took that talking and worked on mockups and followup questions. Can we all agree that modules are weird things? Between adding just a single checkbox somewhere and installing something like Ubercart… It's nearly impossible to find an approach that works equally well for all scenarios. I do think we found ways to improve the page, even incrementally. We'll recap tomorrow and keep you posted.

More good stuff worked on for blocks, menus and taxonomies as well, we'll talk about these another time, ok?

All in all, a very productive day. Looking forward to the over-night reviews from over-seas.

d7ux

drupalplanet

27/28 June: Drupal 7 UX design and code sprint in Utrecht, The Netherlands

Roy — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:47:05 +0000

27/28 June: Drupal 7 UX design and code sprint in Utrecht, The Netherlands Roy 13-06-2009

Design proposals for D7UX project are starting to show up as code in the issue queue for Drupal core. Actual implementation has started.

To give that effort another big boost, there will be a design and code sprint on the 27th and 28th of june in Utrecht, The Netherlands. We have two goals for this hands-on meeting:

- Get a lot of core patches in for the 80+ silly little usability fails that were found in usability tests. All these little issues amount to a lot of frustration for new users. Lets get these out of the way.

- Mark and Leisa are coming as well and will help us fix these smaller issues and align them within the over-arching proposals of the D7UX project framework.

We want to get some serious work done. Bojhan will post a list of issues and topics we will work on. We'll keep you posted on that.

The attendees list is already impressive but there‘s room for a few people more. If you feel you should be there too, let us know in the comments over on the event post or contact Philip "skilip" Vergunst.

Oneshoe.nl is generously providing their office space for hosting this sprint. Awesome.

I'm looking forward to getting good stuff done that weekend!

d7ux

drupalplanet

Notes on the D7UX Sunday Structure Summit

Roy — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:49:59 +0000

Notes on the D7UX Sunday Structure Summit Roy 12-06-2009

Context: http://www.d7ux.org/structure-summit-sunday

Preamble: The site builder tool is not meant to replace all the available expert interfaces in Drupal core but aims to provide a user friendly get-me-started-quick tool on top of these.

All Drupal usability tests have shown that people fall flat on their face the first time they start to use Drupal. This tool wants to specifically improve this first 30 minutes scenario by letting people accomplish something real within that timeframe. Maybe not a full site but at least some "linked and dressed up pages".

An important concern is that so far the site builder tool hasn't shown how it will connect it's beginners' toolset with the expert interfaces.
But it might even not that bad if people have to unlearn stuff when they are confronted with the expert admin interfaces. Getting stuff done in the first 30 minutes gets you invested enough to re-learn some Drupalistic concepts when diving deeper.
Current proposal seems to mix up 'globals' and 'per item' settings, content-types and actual content, page template and actual page etc.
On the spot solutioneering before the actual question is even clear is in the engineer’s DNA, they really can't help it.
Whereas designers… Uhm, what was the question again?
Audience consisted of mainly experienced Drupal insiders with a few brave souls from outside the Drupalverse.
Ivanka did a great job at keeping the discussion on track and on schedule. Much needed, too. Thank you.
Another concern is that the initial choice between site types (blog, social network, event site, brochureware) is both too abstract for total newbies ("what is a social networking site?") and too narrow for people who do have an idea of what they want to make (“If I choose brochureware, does that mean I can't have a forum in there?”). For me that was the main take away.
Instead of site types, people got quite enthousiastic around offering features like a shopping list with ingredients like image gallery, wiki page, blogpost,
D7 core committer Angela cooked up a nice diagram during the chat. We think the features layer in the middle would be a better fit for kickstarting your Drupal first time experience. Maybe the top layer smells too much like weaksauce microwave meals.
Goal of the chat was to decide on wether to continue with the site builder concept or not. The outcome was a firm “Yes, but only if…”. (you break it down one level / show how it connects to the underlying existing tools / ?). This chat deserved better. Not sure what could have been done about it though.
The cooking metaphor works quite well though, use it more often

d7ux

drupalplanet

D7UX meetup in London

Roy — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:27:59 +0000

D7UX meetup in London Roy 07-05-2009

Two weeks ago, I was in London for two days of working on the Drupal 7 User Experience (D7UX) project with Leisa Reichelt, Mark Boulton and Acquians Jeff Noyes and Jason Reed. A lot of topics were covered. Here's my notes on some of them:

Sketching in teams of two generates a lot of material, fast. You can easily fill the day talking about what comes from thirty minutes of sketching.

A toolbar along the top that offers quick acces to the most important bits of your Drupal installation? How boring, how obvious! How revolutionary for Drupal. We can argue some more about what to actually put on that shelf, but let's agree that having that shelf there would be a Good Thing, ok?

Site building and navigation. It's probably the toughest nut to crack. The ideas for fixing this aim to bring many levels of site building together into one flow. From sitemap to page, to region to content or block, to widget to a single field. Oh, plus the menu system of course. This subject would benefit most from chopping it up in a few smaller (but still big) chunks: 1. Building site structure/navigation, 2. Defining Page layouts, 3. Manage all the different bits and pieces to put in those layouts.

Edit on page. Ok. The idea is *not* to make everything directly editable in place. Title and body, yeah sure, why not. Everything else gets taken to the admin overlay. Think inspecting a page with Firebug and the block editing links in Zen theme.

Dries Buytaert joined us on the second day. Even his questions could be answered within the existing framework of ideas. Which was the main goal of this meeting after all: validate the existing concepts, find the holes, do inital brainstorms around those. The only nagging feeling was that at the end of day two, we were just about ready to start tackling the remaining design problems. Time up.

Jeff Noyes invited me to come along to provide some "Drupal insider" experience and perspective. Acquia generously paid for my flight and hotel, for which I say many thanks. Certainly a very interesting exercise I was glad to be a part of.

The take away? Leisa and Mark know what they are doing. Really. We're moving in the right direction. And, with all the Drupal tough love and genuine positive feedback and input combined, we are slowly but surely getting under their skin. They love us already :-)

Let's love them back even more during the second half of this project. Things will be getting a lot more hands-on during the coming weeks and I hope you will join in to help build yet another user friendliest Drupal release ever.

All your input most welcome on the D7UX project web site.

d7ux

drupalplanet

Drupal 7 UX: usabilitytest nr. 1

Roy — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:20:14 +0000

Drupal 7 UX: usabilitytest nr. 1 Roy 07-04-2009

Dit is de eerste 'crowd sourced' usability test voor het Drupal 7 User Experience project.

Wat wordt er getest:

Een eerste opzet voor een taakbalk. Deze taakbalk is één van de concepten die onderzocht worden. Er is een schets voor de indeling van deze taakbalken gemaakt die we graag getest zien worden om te kunnen beoordelen hoe goed de indeling werkt en waar er verbeteringen moeten worden aangebracht.

Download de PDF

Deze test loopt tot eind deze week, tot vrijdag 10 April. Doe mee!

Wie kan er meedoen aan de test:

Deelnemers hebben enige ervaring met Content Management Systemen. Ze hoeven niet bekend te zijn met Drupal en hoeven ook geen Drupal programmeurs te zijn. Iedereen die wel eens een bericht online zet middels een CMS is een geschikte persoon.

Voorbeeldscript voor je testinterview in vijf delen:

1. Introductie.

Bedank de deelnemer voor z'n medewerking en tijd.
Leg uit dat de testresultaten publiek gemaakt zullen worden. Vraag toestemming om de sessie op video op te nemen als je dat gaat doen. Zorg ervoor dat deelnemers onherkenbaar/buiten beeld blijven als ze dat willen.
Geef een korte uitleg over het project: Een betere gebruikerservaring voor Drupal. Geef aan dat het nog vroeg in het proces is en dat alle feedback een grote rol speelt in het precies goed krijgen van het ontwerp.
Maak 100% duidelijk dat het ontwerp getest wordt, niet de deelnemer! Als iets niet begrepen wordt, het antwoord uitblijft of als men denkt iets fout gedaan te hebben - zeg dan dat niet zijn/haar fout is maar dat van het ontwerp.
Moedig deelnemers aan om hardop te denken. Laat ze zoveel mogelijk praten over hoe ze tot een keuze komen. Dit is het meest interessante onderdeel voor de ontwerpers: horen waarom iemand een keuze maakt. Welke keuze precies gemaakt wordt is minder relevant voor deze test.

2. Achtergrondinformatie van de deelnemer

Welke ervaring heb je met het beheren van inhoud op het web?
Heb je ervaring met Drupal? Zo nee, wat heb je er evt. wel over gehoord, zo ja, graag je ervaring omschrijven.
Indien van toepassing: ben je een Drupal ontwikkelaar?

3 Wat als…

We gaan de items op bovenste regel van de taakbalk stuk voor stuk doornemen:

Als je op 'Inhoud' zou klikken, wat denk je dat er dan zou gebeuren? Wat verwacht je dan te zien?
Als je op 'Informatie architectuur' zou klikken, wat denk je dat er dan zou gebeuren? Wat verwacht je te zien?
etcetera…

Als je testpersoon geen duidelijk idee heeft over de betekenis of functie van een onderdeel, vraag dan wat ze denken dat het zou kunnen zijn en waarom.

4. Taken

Nu gaan we 6 korte taken doornemen. Blijf vooral letten op het waarom je testpersoon iets doet of zegt. Blijf het hardop denken aanmoedigen.
Vraag de testpersoon zich voor te stellen dat ze een bedrijfswebsite beheert.

Taak 1: Je wilt de bio van een nieuwe collega toevoegen
Taak 2: Je wilt een oude bio van de site verwijderen
Taak 3: Je wilt een contactformulier aan de website toevoegen
Taak 4: Je wilt collega toegang geven om berichten op de website te publiceren
Taak 5: Je wilt een artikel dat je een jaar geleden gepubliceerd hebt wijzigen.
Taak 6: Je wilt een nieuwe productcategorie toevoegen voor de producten die op de site te zien zijn.

5. Algemene feedback en bedanken.

Rond af door te vragen naar algemene feedback op wat je deelnemer gedaan / gezien heeft. Bedank je deelnemer nogmaals hartelijk voor haar medewerking.

Interviewtips:

Het werkt het beste als je testpersoon ontspannen en gefocussed is. Neem de tijd voor een inleidend praatje. Geef duidelijk aan dat niet de persoon maar het ontwerp getest wordt, en dat er dus geen sprake is van goed of fout. Als mensen twijfelen of aarzelen, vraag ze eerst uit te leggen waar 'm dat in zit en help ze dan verder of sla dat onderdeeltje gewoon over.

Houd voor ogen dat de belangrijkste info die deze test opleveren het waarom achter een handeling of beslissing is. De uiteindelijke actie of keuze is minder relevant. Blijf aanspren tot hardop denken en stel vragen als je iets interessants/ongewoons ziet gebeuren of als mensen vast komen te zitten. Vraag naar waarom men er niet uitkomt en uit te leggen wat de oorzaak is. Hoe proberen ze er toch uit te komen? Die informatie is goud waard!

Je resultaten doorgeven

Gebruik dit formulier om de resultaten van je tests door te geven. Vul voor elke deelnemer een apart formulier in. Mocht je je tests op video opgenomen hebben, upload ze naar youtube en maak ze onderdeel van deze group.

(Dit is een vrije vertaling van het engelse origineel te vinden op http://www.d7ux.org/crowdsourced-usability-testing-rnd1/ )

d7ux

Harmonicas for flooded state screens

Roy — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:42:11 +0000

Harmonicas for flooded state screens Roy 31-03-2009

d7ux

drupalplanet