At the recent & awesome DrupalCon Copenhagan we had two Birds of a Feather meetings (where like minded people meet to have an an informal discuss) regarding what can be done to involve more designers in the Drupal project.
To help aid these discussions we started from the very beginning and created 4 personas. There personas were intended to represent the various types of people who are potentially frustrated with the state of design in Drupal.
Personas
- Sarah is a web-designer. She has been working in Drupal for a little while. She has a basic understanding of Drupal themeing but her primary skills are design and HTML/CSS skills.
- Eric is a print designer with no interest in the web. He is obliged to work with a new CMS for his upcoming project.
- Morten is a themer. He has extensive knowledge about the theming layer and does advanced theming and alterations of markup, content and contexts.
- Zach is a module developer who wants his module's ui to look good, have designer friendly markup, and follow ui best practices.
So what & where next?
These personas came out of a collaborative Google doc (http://bit.ly/asS6uQ). The doc also contains a list of suggestions about what we can do to help these four persona.
I believe the next step is tidying up the doc slightly and creating a space where we can list the different things we can do to help each of these personas.
Essentially creating a list of tasks that need doing and then dividing them up based on their time scales. So the question is: *where do we place this list?*
I am perfectly happy to create something but before I do I would love some ideas. I would also love some feedback about the idea in general.
Comments
THANK YOU!
first of all thank you for taking the initiative to post this! i'm basically Sarah in the above categories and NEED a place that's not so "developy" or "developery" to learn more so i can become Morten :)
As far as "where do we place this list?" i think this page is a good start...
Nice one
Great stuff Edward. As Miro said, big ups for taking the initiative to host the BoF and get peeps involved.
The question 'where to place this list' just sort of goes to show the problems of d.o...
How to proceed
A thank you also from here for the initiative.
The question coming from some of the people in the BoF was where to get easily involved. Designers that would like to contribute don't find an easy starting point.
I can think of at least a dozen tasks, the most urgent of which would be to make the start page of this group http://groups.drupal.org/design-drupal look appealing to designers. There is Panels for OG, which allows at least for something like this http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo
I am not sure when g.d.o. will be part of the redesign of d.o. (Drupal.org) - but I guess it will only look better then but keep all blocks. So we cannot plan for that and just take what it's there.
Another task sure would be to design a landing page for designers on d.o. I guess the redesign team will be happy if someone takes the inititative, as long as we comply to Mark Boultons style guide.
We talked about such a landing page back in Paris with webchick. Maybe the page could be shared for Designers and UX People, or maybe they should be seperate.
I created an issue for that http://drupal.org/node/898110
Neill Drumm http://drupal.org/user/3064 is the one to ask what the current status of the general "get involved" Page is. I cannot find it on www.redesign.drupal.org at the moment, but am pretty sure it was in the iterations for the redesign from Mark Boulton. At least it was an important part of the concept to give people an easy starting point to get involved.
Life is a journey, not a destination
Some previous excerices in
Some previous excerices in documenting primary goals for the different designer types below. For the personas to be useful, we need to know their goals: what do they really want to achieve? From those goals, tasks, content, docs, actions can be derived and worked on. It seems to me that focussing on the needs and goals of Sarah will bring the most benefits to all. Marking this post sticky, important topic etc.
Lets do it!
Some quick responses...
Totally agree. Lets do it!
I am fairly new to the whole drupal.org process. How do we go about it? Does one of us have to be a group organizer?
Totally agree. Lets do it!
The google doc contains some of their goals but the goals and tasks are all bundled in together. It is a good idea to separate users -> goals -> tasks
I have been thinking about this. What I think I will do is start a wiki page on drupal.org (that we can all edit) which lists
1. Personas
2. Their Goals
3. Tasks to meet those goals
Why not start with a wiki
Why not start with a wiki page here in this group?
I would prefer a wiki page
I would prefer a wiki page here or on d.o over Google Docs. Google Docs is not known to be particularly accessible to all users.
Would also be interesting to include designers with disabilities in the personas, to ensure that any concepts / Drupal improvements that come out of the personas will be easily accessible to all users / designers / developers.
Accessibility Consultant & Web Developer - Zufelt.ca
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Added my notes to the wiki:
Added my notes to the wiki: http://groups.drupal.org/node/90849
Thanks, @yoroy!
I just now noticed that I never linked from here to the wiki. Thanks for adding not only your notes but also the link!
Pull user personas out of functional specs?
Wow, I'm really sorry I missed those particular BoFs. It looks like there was some fantastic work done there. I think the only one I heard about at the time was scheduled for the same time as my talk on... user personas. There's never enough time at a DrupalCon to avoid schedule clashes, is there?
I think one important step - but a quite fun one - is to turn these short user roles, plus the goals etc. which aren't necessarily attached to any one user, into four fully-fledged user personas. If we're going to use personas then we should get the most we can out of them.
Currently the spec is deep, but the users themselves are slightly shallow and feel a bit like roles: user personas need more depth and specificity, so that they become a person you'd recognise in the street. That depth is like a deep foundation for a house: you can rest a lot more weight on it the further down it goes. The specificity is really important because it turns them from stereotypes - some web designer we each visualize in our heads - into something simultaneously definite and unarguable, but also archetypal (they're a shorthand for a lot of real users) rather than stereotypical (each speaker uses the persona to project their own assumptions.)
To do this I started with a persona template based on past work we've done at Torchbox. I know it's on Google docs, but I'm happy to move it to the wiki whenever. I would've started there, but I've been doing this slightly out of synch with discussion here as I've had a bad back all this week! I then went from that template to four separate persona documents:
Now, I'm willing to go further: to take what's on the notes on the wiki so far and put them onto all those users as I see fit. But my gut feeling is that it's not my place to do that. The people who had the original discussions should probably take the lead, so that goals etc. end up where people originally wanted them to.
I've got a lot of thoughts about how we can do this and I'd be glad to meet up with a few people on IRC if they're interested and facilitate it in real time. Or it can go on the wiki, but that makes it harder to discuss and direct towards a finished set of four personas. What do people think?
Don't hold back please.
Don't hold back please.
Welcome to the group!
J-P, I wasn't even at DrupalCon, so you were closer than I was to the BoF. I'm really glad to see your expertise added to this project, and I'd really like it if we could take advantage of your offer to work through this in IRC. What do the folks who were there think? Can we take advantage of this opportunity for at least some of us to learn from a pro? (I'm assuming others among us already share J-P's level of expertise.)
J-P, since Everett can't access Google docs, let's reconstruct the outlines for fleshed-out personas in the wiki, if you don't mind. (And I hope you're feeling a lot better already.)
Personas on the wiki page now
I'm quite flattered by the use of the words "expertise" and "pro", as I'm sure I'm as self-taught as anyone else here! But I'd be really glad to lend any hand I can. I've put the expanded user persona outlines on the existing wiki page, so everything's in one place and Everett and anyone else should be able to see it fine.
Let me know if IRC is a possibility. Skype's OK but it would be much harder to take notes. Maybe in the evening by UTC time would be OK for everyone, depending on where they're located? As Roy says, if not enough people can make it, I'm happy to go right ahead and start assigning goals - after all, it's a wiki page so people can edit it once I'm done! - but some things might not make sense to me so I'd probably have to feed back a lot.
Don't hold back x 2
The wiki is an absolutely great start, it is really starting to take shape.
Sorry if I was confusing previously. It was never the intention to have the discussion in a google doc. It was simply a good, quick method of collaboration at the birds of a feather. The wiki is the way to do it.
As one of the people at the BoF I have filled in some of the gaps from my notes and impression of the session. I have fleshed out the personal details and added things to the various sections that I recall being discuss at the BoF. I don't think being at the BoF gives anyone any more ownership of the project though. So I heartily endorse the sentiment of don't hold back.
It would be great to talk on IRC sometime. Evening UTC time is fine with me.
Thanks for getting things started!
I think everyone really appreciates what you did to get the ball rolling, @eoriordan. I myself was not aware that google docs were inaccessible, and I'm sure Everett took no offense so long as we addressed his need as soon as it was identified. I'm not sure when I'll be able to connect on IRC, but I will when I can. (I get off work at 22:30 UTC, so you might be asleep before I even get online.)
Thanks again for making sure the progress from DrupalCon was not only continued but shared as widely as possible.
Whatever works at the time!
I'm sure I replied to this earlier, but don't sweat it about the tech. It's brilliant you've got this online so quickly, and if Google Docs was the best way to start that off then so be it! I used Google Docs initially for the four personas anyway.
Even more brilliant that they're fleshed out now. In the spirit of don't-hold-back, I've added a fair bit to http://groups.drupal.org/node/90849 , most notably trying to split goals into "experience", "end" and "life" goals.
I think the perfect end point would be where everything below the personas was in some way taken care of by the notes within them, but I can't find enough disambiguity in the notes to do that properly. But, again: don't hold back, anyone!
I'll try to get our designers to look at these and see if they can come up with more "flesh" ideas.
Great Work JP
thank you for your time in moving forward this effort!
i have been really busy and haven't checked this page in a couple of weeks and i'm VERY impressed. especially in th descriptions of the persona's and there "goals" etc... i can really identify with them.
i guess the only negative thing i have to say about it is that it's soooooo UGLY!
but that's the whole point of what we are trying to do isn't it? ;)
how do we get our group page styled a littlebit?
I agree!
Actually you bring up something I had been meaning to post regarding the very achievable goal of making the design for drupal group a little prettier. Something along the lines of http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo & http://groups.drupal.org/hostmaster2. I believe that it should be a fairly straightforward but I have no idea of how to get a start on it.
Does anyone know who we might go about this?
I browse the drupal.org
I browse the drupal.org domains using http://userstyles.org/styles/10609, makes things a lot easier on the eye. Layout changes to the group home page etc. can be made by the group admins, there's Panels functionality available for them.
Thanks
That user style is great. Thanks!
Would any of the group admins be interested in changing the layout a little. It is one of those things that I suppose will get swept away with the redesign of drupal.org. Also, let's face it, no matter what we do with panels it is not going to be all that pretty.
But I suppose it would be a good quick fix to get the ball rolling. What do people think?
Potential for an ongoing Design and Usability learning track?
Apologies if this is slightly off topic. It seems like there is a good deal of pre/post DrupalCon momentum for this effort but it has a tendency to fall off between the Cons. Definitely no knock on D4D - this happens a lot in Drupal.
One way to keep momentum going would be to have a Design and Usability learning track on Drupal Dojo where we could lead Dojo sessions and discuss ongoing topics and initiatives in the space. We also could aggregate/recommend related videos, blogs, and other resources throughout the Drupalsphere on the Drupal Dojo website. Drupal Kata, the project-based learning arm of the Drupal Dojo could be a nice platform to create designs and learning experiences by working on actual projects. As both are ongoing, and community driven, leveraging these platforms may be a good way to keep momentum going between DrupalCons.
If there seems to be some compliment, I'd be happy to help interface with the Dojo and Kata.
Gus Austin
good advice, if noone opposes
good advice, if noone opposes i'll add some of this to our goals on the wiki, tomorrow though... time for bed now.... zzzZZZzzz
about the look of our group page i guess we'll have to involve some admin in the process.
i'll be on irc as much as possible tomorrow if anyone is available :D
goodnight all
Cool
That is some serious work JP.
I really begin to see why having fleshed out user personas is a great idea. I want to help these people!
I'm not sure what you are getting at here? The notes bellow the personas definitely need a clean up though. I will get a start on putting some shape on them over the next few days. If anyone wants to help don't hold back!
The idea of good, solid user
The idea of good, solid user personas is that they encapsulate the spec, and that if you asked a question that the notes currently answer, like:
then the user personas slot into that, e.g:
In a sense, you want the personas to be the master, not the notes.
I'll try to move notes into the personas as much as I can - v busy with modules at the moment and back gone again :(
looks like a good time to jump in
Just a quick intro - I'm Tom, this is my first contribution to any Drupal project. Like a lot of you guys, I'm aghast at the state of usability within Drupal and the Drupal.org site. D7 is a HUGE stride in the right direction, and I'm excited to help. My background is in design, I'm a self taught programmer, and have been teaching website design for 10 years.
If I can offer one suggestion right off the bat: I don't remember how I got to this page, or to the linked personas wiki, whether it was via drupal.org usability or drupal 7 usability. If the page title reflected the purpose of the page a little better, that wouldn't be an issue. The biggest issue I find with Drupal.org is the total lack of context and organization of the massive amount of really good content, and I think that wrangling that content into a recognizable IA scheme would be a major step in the usability-ization of drupal.org.
Although I know this is approaching the problem backwards, one big example: http://drupal.org/theme-guide/6 . I can't find anything that would lead me to this page. I found it via a search, but the breadcrumbs give me absolutely nothing to go on for how I would find this page otherwise. Searching the home page gives nothing of value.
Persona-wise, I most closely match Sarah, though I've done a lot of theming on other platforms, so I expect to end up closer to Morten in short order.
I'd like to add a persona as well:
Roger is a corporate IT employee in charge of determining the best option for a CMS for his company's website redesign project. He is generally technical in a "what features/specs does my CMS need to support?" kind of way, knows enough programming to get by, and needs to be able to find out the pros and cons of using Drupal versus other platforms.
Just realized I missed the
Just realized I missed the "represent the various types of people who are potentially frustrated with the state of design in Drupal." Rolling back my own addition. Guess it pays to read all the words ;)
Welcome tkeenoy, good to have
Welcome tkeenoy, good to have you participating. Your absolutely right about the disconnect between drupal.org and the groups pages. For the drupal website redesign, read up on http://drupal.org/node/908744 for the current status.
Turning the user personas inside out
Not literally, of course: that could get messy. But I've started to try to match up the goals in the notes on the wiki page to the relevant personas: http://groups.drupal.org/node/90849 - look under the "Goals" heading towards the bottom. I've added Sarah, Eric, Zach and Jessica where appropriate to the goals.
Now people need to tell me where I'm wrong! Edit the suggestions I've put into the notes. Be bold! Don't hold back!
The idea is that the next step is to rewrite bits of the persona to get the goal motivations in there somehow where possible. That way we turn [goal => personas] inside out, to make it [persona => goals], while also keeping the notes so we know what's been discussed.
Once the personas encapsulate all the notes, and we feel they're "real people", we could top them with four photos from iStockphoto (or any good, suitable, really believable CC Flickr photos - but they have to be good yet really casual) and then I think as a persona spec they're "done", in the sense that they can be relied upon when future spec questions come up (and we could use them to dictate the next steps if people want.)
A fifth wheel on the wagon?
I've added a fifth draft persona that the Torchbox designers came up with: http://groups.drupal.org/node/93399 . Even if we don't need a full extra persona then it at least adds a bit of anecdotal evidence for us.
... And I'm done
With no changes on the wiki page for a while, I've rolled all the general goals e.g. "Help me learn how to theme" back into the four users, to pad out their own personal goals, frustrations and possible future Drupal community involvement.
With that, I'm done. But as above, be bold if you really feel they need more background info, or the goals don't make sense.
I've also added some Creative Commons Flickr photos. They're representative, so if you don't like them and can find another CC photo, then change it! But please credit any photos you use under Creative Commons. (If people desperately want us to use an iStockPhoto I have an account kicking around somewhere, but I like the less stock-photo look of those four.)
All we have to do now is actually use these personas, of course. They all want to help us, help them.
Design for Drupal: Design Goal
Been a little while.
I have been thinking of the next step here and the best way to get a bit of momentum behind this again. For me the next step is to begin to create resources based on the personas. What do people think? I think in someways there is so much stuff that we could do that it can be a little overwhelming.
But, I guess, every journey starts with little steps and the best (and most Drupal-y) way to get something going is to make a start yourself! With that in mind I have a few projects I have been working on.
So what do people think?
Also (and this is half way between an excuse for my lack of action and an invitation) I am organising DrupalCamp Ireland which will take place on 20-21 Nov in Trinity College Dublin. If anyone would like to discuss anyone of this stuff it would be great to see you there!
Separate thread & wiki page?
I think this would be a great idea. I think we could also maybe tie it into solving the outstanding d.o issues discussed on http://groups.drupal.org/node/99784 if we move quickly.
Maybe we should start a new thread for creating resources, and a wiki page for those resources? It sort of feels like a new project to me, and also that would avoid this new effort getting lost at the bottom of this existing discussion.
Edit: I've started a thread at http://groups.drupal.org/node/99829 to discuss.
How can we get involved?
What is best way to get involved? We really would love to contribute somehow where it comes to front-end theming. For example we created a tool to test out all demo themes for drupal, and play around. Additionally we provide a Template Framework, called JDT3, that can help SARAH or MORTON speeding up theming in Drupal without knowing PHP for example, HTML/CSS is enough. This is only an initial attempt to do so and we would like to know whether its easy to use for those personas.
BTW: For your DrupalCamp Ireland event, if you think our Events Theme for Drupal would be a fit, we offer it for Camps & Cons for free + support to get it look great.
Drupal Specialist Teams
Oh and yeah...
One thing I meant to say was that the three things I am interested in doing (and am doing) are just ones that I find interesting and useful for myself.
Like I said there are loads and loads of things we can do to help and I am sure other people will have things that they find interesting. It would be great to have different people looking and at different projects coming out of this discussion.
The personas idea is great! I
The personas idea is great! I wish I could have attended that panel.
One thing I think would be beneficial in documentation for Themers would be to list the possible keywords that something might be called. For example, it took me a long time searching around the web for ways to customize how input is entered into Drupal. I wanted to improve the input experience, NOT how output is styled. Eventually I learned that this is done via the Node Input Form and to this discussion on Usability. If you've been using Drupal for a while this is a no brainer but for others this may not be overly apparent. A list of helpful keywords within the doc pages would be a help and possibly help with searches later for non-developer folk.
I would like to get involved with this effort if there is still ongoing interest. Ideally I'd love to put something together that's the Themer documentation version of Drupalmodules.com but that may be overly ambitious.
http://www.webbfx.net/