A usable admin theme

Let's see if they can provide you some feedback/directions on where to go.

Not only admin ui is important, but also user ui is far more important for user-generated content sites, e.g., community sites or multi-user blog. Admin would like to know anything happen to the web but users would also happy to see what happen to their all contents in a glance. Drupal has all functionalities users want but these all features are provided by individual modules, e.g., tracker and statistics. It would be nice to have a page for each user to concentrate on their contents, everything about their contents.

Sounds like re-organizing the admin menu system could be the first task to be worked on.

One thing I see, that could be done, is to have all module configuration options given its own menu container instead of being grouped under 'Site Configuration.'

Having separate parent menu containers would make it a lot easier for users to differentiate between module configuration options and general site configuration options.

One, there is an admin theme in the works, regurarly posted to the Planet. Two, last year we took on two cores themes and we found out that we are somewhat short on good mentoring resources for themes (this is sad, but it's a fact)... as SoC is about code mostly, I am not 100% now that a theme meshes nicely anyways.

At least that's what I read from this:

"I'm also aware of other efforts to improve Drupal usability, such as the rootcandy theme. While I think it's very promising, it's also 'merely' a theme. It does nothing to close the gap between the user's mental model and the system's mental model, the developer-oriented language and concepts used throughout, or the akward ordering in the administration menu (which was made painfully clear in the latest usability study)."

I think this is about taking some of the usability issues that the UMN team found (and other usability research) and incorporating those into Drupal core. Which sounds awesome. Also hard. We haven't historically had a great deal of luck with SoC projects that did stuff to core; they usually end up as a patch hovering about uncommitted for years, which is a sucky way to end up. :(

I think the only way for this to work is to come up with a more detailed proposal that identifies a series of usability issues and their solutions, and your SoC project becomes solving a collection of those.

http://groups.drupal.org/node/9474

Jeroen,

1. I don't understand how creating an installation profile would fit in to a re-do of the Administration pages. I understand installation profiles as helping to install a set of contrib modules and/or setting initial configuration options. So how would this help with a redesign of the administration section?

2. My focus will also not be on coding per se, but more in a series of coding experiments that should result in a conceptual remodeling of the Drupal admin interface, better information architecture, improved admin screens that combined should form a working admin theme.

   Seems like changing Drupal's IA is way out of scope for this project. Focus always helps.

3. I think "usability for whom"? is always important to thing about. I would argue that focussing in on the same group the UMN usability experiments did is a good idea. For professional site builders, contrib modules like admin_menu have taken the urgency away from needing to re-organize stuff. So by focussing on folks who are trying to create a Drupal solution without hiring a pro, I think you'd get to the main group that is suffering from admin-menu frustration.
4. Part of learning any system is simply about getting used to the system and its language. Nothing will be perfect. There was a big admin menu organization from 4.7 to 5. In order to launch another re-organization, there needs to be a compelling case that what is new is better. An example of how a solution sometimes causes a worse problem is the cool new teaser splitter thingy which shows up on every node/add page in D6. The UMN research showed it was a usability nightmare. Just because there may be a solution to something, doesn't mean it is the right solution. A clear and detailed critique of the current admin organization would need to be articulated, I think, even before experiments were launched.

5. I'm also aware of other efforts to improve Drupal usability, such as the rootcandy theme. While I think it's very promising, it's also 'merely' a theme. It does nothing to close the gap between the user's mental model and the system's mental model, the developer-oriented language and concepts used throughout, or the akward ordering in the administration menu

   I think this is the heart of what you are after. I love your words, "close the gap between the user's mental model and the system's mental mode." I personally think that working on educational materials that target answering this question is actually the most efficient way of getting at this problem. You are suggesting getting at this programatically. But it isn't clear what programmatic angle you are taking on this. Clarifying that would help.

Keep pluggin' away at this!

One other approach to closing the gap between mental models and the system's model could include the Help system.

While I'm not sure I follow the install profile idea. The problem I see with install profiles in this domain is that users who don't know Drupal don't know enough to install with a profile other than the default profile and once they have a site with a little bit of content having to erase in order to re-install with a new install profile is a huge pain.

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One of the most longstanding and common criticisms of Drupal is the lack of a dedicated administration theme. Steps have been made to make a proper admin theme (Nerdtastic, Rootcandy, CivicSpace) but despite the demand nothing has gained much traction. Having an admin theme is particularly important as Drupal aims to attract more designers to the platform. Having to worry about how a theme effects the administration area and content creation screens is an unnecessary barrier to entry compared to other CMS systems. To make a proper admin theme there has to be a lot of thought and effort put in to make something that has a level of polish and completeness. SoC 2008 might allow enough resources for one effort to gain significant traction. Here's my wishlist of what I'd like to see in such an effort. I'd love for others to expand on a requirements list...

• The admin theme should not fight with the current layout of the administration page. A helper module and/or significant configuration changes should not be required.
• The theme that is simple and quick loading. The look can still be elegant without needing a ton of background images (see Wordpress, Basecamp, Movable Type etc.)
• The color module should be leveraged so that users could make the administration area match their site while still providing a standard look and feel.

While I do not see the primary objective here would be to create a theme ready for core, any effort should be structured so that it could be considered for possible inclusion in Drupal 7 or later. As a side point, a concerted effort to create an admin theme could point out any deficiencies that make themeing the administration area difficult. Patches and suggestions would be highly valued.

Jeroen, to comment on the proposal, I think that the main area to work is defining the scope of you're wanting to do. There is a clear deliverable at the end of the summer - what is it that you're trying to do? Usability testing, re-ordering/improving menus and creating an install profile are all valuable but you can not do all. Choose a single focus, describe how you'd tackle the problem and what will be delivered in the end.

Personally, I think the first step in all of this is to create a general admin interface that works with Drupal as it stands now but is general enough to adapt to interface re-organization. As webchick touched on, trying to improve Drupal's interface and organization is a hard thing to deliver as its dependent on changes to core. As well, for an install profile to leverage an admin theme the theme must come first.

Hi all, thanks for the great feedback so far! Just wanted to let you know I'm working on a revised proposal, which I hope to post tomorrow.

There are many designers that are far better IMO than HappyCog when it comes to usability. I really do agree that we should have professionals doing this though not just who ever on Drupal.org happens to want to take on the task. Personally I would be looking at examples like Magento or fellows such as http://www.31three.com

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This is a really big task and not an easy one.
You will have to count with all the new functionality which is coming into drupal 7, lots of usability improvements (e.g. node edit screens), and others...

When I've started to work on rootcandy, I wanted to do actually the same thing you want to achieve. I shipped a module which was adding some more functionality to D6, for example ajax calls for admin pages or improving node edit/add screens. Recently I have removed these modules, and trying to build a solid admin theme for D6, while reading and discussing usability improvements and new functionality of D7 on irc or g.d.o

IMHO we need wireframes, then functionality in the core, as most of the usability improvements have to be done there, then theme, which will add some nice design, color module, elements placement (navigation menu, etc...) which can be then shipped with core.

Of course new themes and stuff are nice. I feel that merely reasoning that we need something is a community proposal, as opposed to a student proposal.

Why not post some mockups of what you can do and what you have in mind?

I think whats needed is a new admin interface that themes can be built on and modules can hook into (if hook is the right term.)

Producing the mockup for the interface is nearly half the job, coding it is the other half. I do not think such a task can be handled by a single person, let alone 2. You would need one student and mentor to create the mockups, another student and mentor to create patches or code changes. Thats four persons of which only two (the programming student and programming mentor) get to do any actual coding.

As Sign stated

IMHO we need wireframes, then functionality in the core, as most of the usability improvements have to be done there, then theme, which will add some nice design, color module, elements placement (navigation menu, etc...) which can be then shipped with core.

If a full fledged admin theme (images, graphics, etc..) is to be created, the grand total number of participants at minimum would be 6:
student and mentor for wire frames
student and mentor for code changes in core to allow the new interface to work.
student and mentor for creating the visual elements (images, banners, etc.) and then coding it in.

One for admin root users and one for editor-style admin interfaces - basically people who need/should not touch performance settings etc. This (editor) interface could be inline, e.g. wherever an editable content exists.

I am sure for either of the interfaces we require extensive wireframing. Possibly Drupal Association could hire some IA experts to do this?