#d8ux

Drupal 8 Content Experience: Accessibility Findings

Goal

To conduct accessibility evaluation of Drupal 8 focussed on the content authoring experience (create content and edit content)

Methodology

The study was conducted in July 2013 in two phases:
Phase 1: Evaluation with volunteer Drupal users with accessibility needs. The participants were given the testing script with scenario and were asked to report their feedback
Phase 2: Conduct 3-participant moderated usability study consistent with the testing script (mentioned above).

We had our weekly UX happy hour on Feb 25, 2013 from 4 pm to 5 pm (EST) on #drupal-usability

The meeting was attended by: bojhan, dcmistry, koleary, jbeach, tvn, yoroy

Points of discussion:
- How can the contributors contribute to the UX project?
o Bojhan and Dcmistry to work on documentation
o Koleary to kick-off discussion on adding contributions to the profile page for non-tech guys: designers/ ux researchers/ project managers/marketing, etc.
- Make the block plugin UI shippable

Modal dialogs are making their way into core and this could have a great impact on UX strategy for all of Drupal. In general modals are useful for allowing a user who is engaged in a primary task objective to temporarily carry out a ‘secondary’ task in an additional ‘window’.

The SiteBuilding Usability Initiative video released last month illustrates the general concept.

As we found out in London, Drupal's mobile admin interface faces some big obstacles to overcome. If we want to to be able to tackle some of these problems in the next release cycle we need focus, the idea being we don't move on to the next item in till we have the previous one licked. I've whipped up proposal for our road map. This is by no means complete, there is plenty of detail to fill in.

I'm hoping we can work on it together.

Words to live by

Don't let the current interface hold us back

On the Friday of Drupalcon London we ran a Mobile Usability Testing Session on Drupal's admin interface.

View the issue spreadsheet on google docs

We had a strong turnout, with lots of enthusiasm from the testers. We managed to test the UI on the following devices:

• Nokia N900
• Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc
• HTC Sensation
• Samsung galaxy s2
• iPad 2
• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 3G

Here are some of the thoughts I came away with after the session.

The Design Initiative has three main goals - build a new core theme, build a new collaboration site for designers, and community outreach. The new core theme initiative is well under way and we're tantalizingly close to design.drupal.org becoming a reality. What we need to do now is step up a gear and start thinking about outreach.

A big part of any user experience is usability. It's the first step toward an engaging and seamless experience.

There are three key areas that will be the focus of the formal mobile usability tests:

1. Navigation
2. Readability
3. User Input

Currently Drupal's admin interface fails one and two almost instantly on small and touch screens. All three need a wide range of tests before we can confidently address these issues. I'd like it if people could weigh in based on previous experience.

I'll be posting more about the usability tests soon.

I'm looking at putting together an initiative that will look into the user experience of administrating a Drupal site through a non-desktop PC.

Road Map

1. Redesigning the navigation of the admin interface on small and touch screens.
2. Heavily modifying the 'Seven' Theme to become more responsive and mobile friendly

"Mobile User" Experience

The emphasis is not on the device, but on the context of the person using it. I would almost call it 'device agnostic'. What is important is that the user is not sitting at as desk facing a big screen. They could be on the bus, sitting in a cafe or walking back from work.