Focus of the study
To understand the following:
- Current Pain Points with Drupal
- Feedback on Spark
- End to end process of content creation process
- Applications used in conjunction with Drupal
Participant profile
- 8 Drupal admins/ webmasters/ site builders/ themers who have professional experience (or interest) in user experience, user interface design, or web design at Stanford
- Participants predominantly use Drupal, Wordpress. Other CMS’s include: Modex, Mongotype
Current pain points with Drupal
Epic Issues
- Media Handling: Editing and positioning of images (esp. photo credits and captions) is a major pain point esp. when the users are not very tech savvy
- Content Staging, and previews: For business, it is extremely important to see how your content will exactly look like. Requests for content staging have been numerous and frequent. The problem is exaggerated with the disconnect between written content, previewed content and published content. This was perceived to be the biggest pain point while dealing with a CMS
- WYSIWYG and Rich Text Editor: Often, the content is exported from Word and it doesn’t translate correctly into the WYSIWYG. Content has to be tweaked and reformatted.
- Documentation is incomplete/ unclear for modules: Lack of precise information makes it difficult to decide a module. The current workaround is trial and error method and talking to colleagues/ peers (Categorizing this as “Epic”, because it is difficult to implement)
- Non tech savvy users: Since the clients aren’t always tech savvy, it requires more training (and repeating information) on how things work. Participants talked about the additional time spent (away from building or maintaining things) training and retraining clients
Actionable Issues
- Finding a piece of content: Participants complained that the current way to find a piece of content is inefficient. Although participants did not have suggestions on fields to find a piece of content, they did suggest that customizing the exposed filters would be useful
- I just installed a module, where do I find it under the toolbar?: Participants complained that they resort to trial and error method of knowing where does the module end up in the toolbar. Tips/ Help text in this area would be helpful.
- Dashboards: Lot of info by default, which isn’t useful. Dashboards have to be customized to make some use of it and it should be easier to customize them.
Spark Feedback
Inline editing
Although inline is “amazing”, participants commented that it could be “confusing” at the same time. It is extremely crucial for the UI to inform the user on:
- Clear label distinction between “Edit inline” vs. “Edit full node”
- If I edit a piece of content, how and where these changes will be propagated to (THIS WAS PERCEIVED TO BE THE BIGGEST CONCERN w/ SPARK)
Toolbar feedback
Positives
- Relabeled “Modules” (Although the participant liked “Extend” over “Modules”, we have additional data from other studies that “Extend” isn’t working completely either)
- Icons
- Responsiveness of the toolbar
- Switching between horizontal and vertical view of the toolbar
- Shortcuts
- Keyboard accessible
- Bigger target area makes it better for tablet usage
Want
- Customize exposed filters for finding content
- Nest shortcuts by role
- Contextual help
End to end content creation process
1. Content Gathering Stage
What’s included: Copy, videos, images, attachments, images/ caption text, relevant links are collected. This
stage need to be accessible to others, editable, reviewable
Communication pattern: User to User (online/offline) and User with an application (which may or may not be the CMS***)
Depending upon the organization, it could be multiple days, multiple people, multiple communication channels between the content owner and the content itself.
2. Content Creation Stage
What’s included: Content is gathered from various sources and put it into the CMS. Custom HTML/CSS is generated at this stage, if needed
Communication pattern: Predominantly, user with CMS: Content Creator/Maintainer interacts with the CMS
3. Content Staging Stage
What’s included: The concern is “How will the content look?” Need for a LIVE preview is loud and clear
Communication pattern: User with CMS: Content Creator/Maintainer interacts with the CMS
4. Edit/ Review Stage
What’s included: Reviewed for content and the look and feel
Communication pattern: User with CMS - Content Creator/Maintainer interacts with the CMS. For complex look and feel issues, site builder (receives instructions online/offline from the content creator) with the CMS
5. Push to queue/Publish
Communication pattern: User with CMS
*** Other software apps that participants use in conjunction with Drupal:
- Dreamweaver
- Rich text editor
- Word
- Jumpstart
Other Notes
- Moderator’s guide
- Focus Group Recording
- Special thanks to Megan Miller from Stanford for co-ordinating and facilitating the focus group