Usability

Come discuss, create and plan great Drupal UX design

Other places to explore: Core issues tagged 'usability', Where UI docs live, Come chat in IRC in #drupal-usability.

Concepts and tasks - towards a general usability plan for Drupal

Posted by solipsist on March 10, 2008 at 6:13pm

Reading the presentation Dries posted on his site (http://buytaert.net/files/usability-testing-minnesota.pdf) I saw a lot of my own thoughts regarding the usability obstacles in Drupal echoed. Thank you all involved for all the efforts that have gone into doing usability research on Drupal. I believe the results we're seeing are invaluable.

I'm posting this as my own reflections on what I've seen and reflected over so far. It's opinion and not statement of fact and I'd like to hear your opinion on the issues I discuss below.

Web Resource on Usability

Posted by sharonklardie on March 10, 2008 at 5:44pm

Hi,

I came across this web site and thought i would pass this along. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ one article jumped out at me - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/fancy-formatting.html shows eye tracking / heat map of users who were tasked with finding the population of a country -- and the 86% of users failed to find the information - i have not read the other articles but i will be reviewing them over the next couple of weeks to see if there is anything else that jumps out at me.

Smile
Sharon

WordPress-liked Dashboard

Posted by markpeak on March 9, 2008 at 3:08pm

I want to have a user Dashboard page, like in WordPress. After logged-in, user will see appropriate, stylish and easy-to-use links and panels. This should improve Drupal usability.

Effective Use of space: Redesign of drupal.org modules page

Posted by eigentor on March 9, 2008 at 12:04pm

Drupal.org will see a huge overhaul one day - at least I hope so. Always having an eye for the competition may help. Interfacewise one can always look what Joomla does. http://extensions.joomla.org

I gotta say - it is so simple to present a lot of content in a still manageable way. Four Columns with Categories, two blocks with newest and most popular modules on top, and here you go. Could be a sample for other pages as well. I'm thinking of access control page and modules page in the drupal admin section.

Games to improve site stickness - recommended modules

Posted by druvision on March 9, 2008 at 1:56am

I am looking of a way to increase stickness to my Drupal powered business index.
Light games seem like an interesting option.

Some ideas:
1. Random picture => identify the business.
2. Weekly Polls with Prizes.
3. Crossword / Puzzle module (e.g. like here).
4. Complete tasks to earn points.

Which modules do you recommend?
And do you have other game ideas which encourage stickness?

Thanks in advance,

Amnon

Community Segmentation, Bad News?

Posted by robin monks on March 8, 2008 at 9:31pm

What brings me to this topic is all the excited talk I've been hearing second hand about splitting groups.drupal.org and drupal.org into many separate chunks (documentation.drupal.org, news.drupal.org, groups.drupal.org, downloads.drupal.org, content.contributed.maintained.6.modules.downloads.drupal.org , you see where this is going). What worries me is that in such an implementation it may become too complex to get to key areas or discussions.

The way I see it, there are a couple major roadblocks for making such a system work (here comes the dreaded Robin-list, grab some coffee):

Continue reading and comment at my blog >

Drupal let the quality boat sail by

Posted by robin monks on March 8, 2008 at 4:24pm

Hold on, hear me out :o) We're a really focused and strong (and almost too commercial) community, and we really have put our focus on features and output, and we've lacked a lot when it's come to making it all work correctly in every possible case.

That's where quality testing comes in. I've been thinking about Drupal's quality assurance process for a couple years now, but in the last few months it's really come to a head for me. My personal "dam-breaking" moment came when the Batch API in Drupal 6 prevented install, and other tasks depending on the API from running automatically, or in text based browsers, or in browsers were people have been privacy conscious and disabled JS and Meta refresh tags.

Without proper quality trails this will continue to happen. And here's another point I'd like to make:

Continue reading and comment at DrupalFiles >

Drag drop usability improvements

Posted by btopro on March 7, 2008 at 9:41pm

I attached a real quick and dirty mock up of possible improvements to make to the new drag and drop system that was created for D6. Having already invested sometime into making a drag and drop interface for 5 (will be released shortly) I noticed a lot of features that I included in my module that I think would be great to have as part of the core drag and drop interface. Wish-list / some things I'll be trying to throw into a patch once I figure out the drag/drop architecture :) :

ul>

Possible Usability projects?

Posted by bonobo on March 7, 2008 at 12:16am

This idea came out of a conversation Bevan and I were having at DrupalCon -- maybe it's crazy talk, but maybe it'll work.

Identify and isolate admin features; for example, creating forums, which currently requires a few steps, and knowledge of containers, etc. Analyze the workflow/mouse clicks required to build this functionality. Then, create a wireframe of the admin functionality that simplifies the task. Then, create a helper module that builds the streamlined, more intuitive UI

Help API

Posted by japerry@drupal.org on March 6, 2008 at 3:31pm

Moved to official ideas list at http://drupal.org/node/237899

Staring with some of the things here and some thinking and discussion here's a proposed proposal for a coding project:

Drupal's help system is fairly incomplete. At drupalcon there were many examples where the lack of a help system contributed to its usability woes. This project aims to enhance Drupal's help system through a pluggable, extensible help system API.

Discuss "A Strategy For Self-Explaining UX Design" DrupalCon talk

Posted by drumm on March 4, 2008 at 5:29pm

Bob Goodman presented http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/session/burn-help-manual-strategy-self-explaining-ux-design at DrupalCon Boston.

Post any thoughts or ideas you have here.

Drupalcon Report Back from UMN Usability Testing

Posted by KentBye on March 3, 2008 at 9:24pm

CODY HANSON: A lot to cover -- posting a lot of raw data on http://groups.drupal.org/usability -- How this got started -- He was putting together academic sites to find materials. Went to Barcelona, and noticed that Dries had prioritized usability. After 4th time hearing usability, he realized that they have a state of the art usability lab at the University of Minnesota. Approached Dries, and it got started from there. Excited about the network effect of this usability work.

Drupal Human Interface guidelines? Are we ready?

Posted by morphir on March 3, 2008 at 4:15pm

The topic says it all - I want us to consider if we might be ready to implement the Human Interface Guidelines into Drupal themes. First and foremost within Drupal core themes and modules.

These guidelines might include:

Standardized input/output messages
Layouts of menus
Menu structures
help and manuals
Page layouts
Semantics
....you name'em grandma!

UMN Libraries Usability Testing Roundup

Posted by drumm on March 3, 2008 at 3:04pm
Last updated by codyh on Wed, 2008-03-05 17:06

Drupalcon Boston 2008 presentation slides: Google Docs slideshow

First we designed tasks and scenarios to test.

Deliverables, which uncover UI problems, from the test include:

We are working on a full itemized list of issues.
Eye-tracking footage

Changes to implement and long-term goals:

Eye-tracking footage from UMN Libraries' usability testing

Posted by codyh on March 2, 2008 at 11:50pm

Eye-tracking capture.

This is video from one of our evaluators' attempt at the first task in our usability test. For details of the task, see here.

Usability testing scenario and tasks - UMN Libraries' Drupal usability testing Feb. '08

Posted by codyh on March 1, 2008 at 11:58pm

These are the tasks we set forth for evaluators in the usability testing round at the University of Minnesota Libraries.

Scenario

You are the webmaster for Wilson Library, and you have chosen a new content management system to manage part of the library’s online services.

You have been asked to configure the system so that your librarians can log in to create web pages for workshops they teach at the library.

Wrapup of Usability presentation at FOSDEM

Posted by eigentor on February 29, 2008 at 6:26am

The presentation was an amazing success. Big whoo-up for everybody involved in Usability, people oviously hunger for it. Video is to be found here: http://lvb.net/item/6026
The files are to be found here: http://netzschwimmer.de/dateien/drupal/fosdem/Use-A-Bility.pdf
Some Images are not GPL'd, but if there is no legal action, I'll leave it like that for the moment, it does not have to be there long anyway.

I had typed a long and worked out text here, till my browser crashed several times and all was dumped :( Don't have the nerve to redo it now. But it saved you some time reading :)

User Experience Goals Draft

Posted by Bevan on February 28, 2008 at 2:57pm
Last updated by haqan on Mon, 2009-09-07 19:46

This document is the result of a discussion after Day 2 of the formal usability testing at UMN on 27 Feb 2008 about general high level usability goals and based partially on the usability tests. The "8 Golden Rules" and " Apple Human Interface Guidelines" were referenced and used to help guide discussion.

We selected 5 of of these as 'important' and worthy of publishing and promoting as usability goals for Drupal, at the same level as drupal's mission and principle. This needs to be fleshed out with descriptions / paragraphs.

User Experience Goals

Edited version following discussion:

What are these goals for?
These usability goals are for Drupal core development, they are recommended for contributed module and theme developers.

Who is a Drupal user?
A user is someone using the Drupal software to set up, configure or maintain a website. This includes developers, administrators and content editors. These users should be able to provide good UX to their visitors. This can be achieved with good defaults and flexible tools.

User Experience Goals

A tested user experience based on research
Researching users’ experiences and interactions is the best way to identify usability issues. Research finds problems and measures success, but does not provide solutions.

An intuitive interface
User interfaces should be straightforward and concise. An interface should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

A consistent interface
Provide consistent user interfaces; reusing elements internally, and from website user interface conventions in general. The results of actions should be predictable and expected.

Clear Language
Terminology should be unambiguous and in plain English. Help text should be relevant and readily accessible.

Informative Feedback
Give relevant feedback guiding users through tasks, confirming success and providing useful feedback in case of error.

(almost) Original goals from the UMN brainstorming session

Measure User Experience. Research on users’ experiences and interactions is the best way to identify usability issues. Although research will not directly generate solutions, it finds problems and measures success.

5 human factors central to evaluating the user experience are:

Time to learn: How long does it take for typical users to learn relevant task?
Speed of performance: How long does it take to perform relevant benchmarks?
Rate of errors by users: How many and what kinds of errors are made during benchmark tasks?
Retention over time: Frequency of use and ease of learning help make for better user retention
Subjective satisfaction: Allow for user feedback

Consistency. Be consistent among Drupal user interfaces and with website user interface conventions. The results of actions should be predictable and expected. Drupal provides reusable patterns for many user interface elements.

Understandable Language. Use language that is understandable by users. Terminology should be unambiguous and useful. Help should be useful and readily accessible.

Not Feel Overwhelming. User interfaces should be straightforward and concise. Make complex tasks easy and hide, or omit, useless or irrelevant user interface elements.

Informative Feedback. Give useful and helpful messages and details about actions to reassure, give confidence, and guide to related tasks.

Separate login / registeration links for usability improvement - please review the patch

Posted by druvision on February 28, 2008 at 5:17am

I've modified logintoboggan to allow separate login and registration links for usability improvement. Please review the patch.

Usability issues found by The U-Gang

Posted by webchick on February 28, 2008 at 12:13am
Last updated by Thomas_Zahreddin on Sun, 2008-07-13 20:11

Update - a full spreadsheet of all formally identified issues now available.

This page is going to capture all of the actionable items we discovered through the usability testing we did at the University of Minnesota. If these don't have links to issues, that means they haven't been created yet. Please help by creating issues (and, optionally, add a DROP task) and update the link here. Thanks!

Update 13th March - catch - I've added the spreadsheet the lab gave us after testing. This is the product of logging all the issues we observed from the 8 evaluators, then processing to find duplicates/related issues and setting priority. If anyone has time to go through some of these and add them as issues that'd be wonderful

Subscribe with RSS