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.
What can be improved in Drupal 6 RC2?
I have just installed Drupal 6 RC2.
What I currently see as a possible UX improvement:
Drag and Drop Blocks being more easily draggable:
While dragging and dropping blocks with the + sign works well, a user would also expect to be able to drag and drop blocks by clicking on the block title as well.
In place of the + sign, blocks could be given mini-icons (I'll go into that later, about modules having mini-icons to represent themselves.)
Please post with more stories about possible UI Improvements you can suggest after installing Drupal 6 RC2.
Read more
Usability in GHOP
I have created a series of four usability testing tasks in the GHOP programme. Each one tests a different area of Drupal:
Read moreCurrent UI Priorities?
Currently these are the priorities I've noticed regarding UI topics on irc, d.o and lately g.d.o:
- User menus have a create content folder (which is confusing for new site builders) instead of having direct create content links
- Admin and site manager menus being difficult to navigate
- Node forms (add and edit content)
- Views 2 UI (I only started using Views 1 a few weeks back so it might take a while to get a Views 2 UI wireframe ready. There seems to be a lot of talk about a Views 2 UI re-work on IRC.)
Accordion for Node add/edit Form
We have been thinking and working quite a lot on node add/edit forms. There was bit of an Agreement to solve the problem of the overlong form by splitting it into tabs http://drupal.org/node/185814
Read more
Relevance-Enhanced Image Reduction and image presets
Sometimes I've been looking for a module which would let me crop an image visually, though I haven't found one working for the drupal version I've been using, until recently when Imagefield crop became available (Edit: which supposedly will be folded into Imagecrop for D6. The latter module is a later addition which I weren't aware of when I wrote this.)
However, there is still one missing concept and that is Relevance-Enhanced Image Reduction which is what would be the best solution for this.
Read more
Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design
Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design"
These rules were obtained from the text Designing the User Interface by Ben Shneiderman. Shneiderman proposed this collection of principles that are derived heuristically from experience and applicable in most interactive systems after being properly refined, extended, and interpreted.
To improve the usability of an application it is important to have a well designed interface. Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" are a guide to good interaction design.
1 Strive for consistency.
Read moreWiki: Make the drupal core interface more usable (new theme)
Last updated by stevebayerin on Sat, 2008-01-19 05:43
Share your thoughts for a new drupal (core) theme!
I've started a new issue that aims to make a brand new theme for Drupal. The theme will focus on improving usability of the administration pages. (we do not focus on fancy pants graphics yet)
We start with a analysis process, where our basis will Ben Shneidermans "8 golden rules of interface design".
You can learn more about the "8 golden rules" here:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jtenenbg/courses/360/f04/sessions/schneide...
What we will need is:
<
ul>
Read moreAdmin theme: Root Candy
There seems to be a lot of great work on usability in admin going into this admin theme called RootCandy:
It sounds like it's still pretty unstable but worth watching nonetheless.
The author created this wiki page: http://groups.drupal.org/node/8247
Read moreImproved Image Field Module
See preview attached, the FUTURE ajaxy image field module that we should create.
Functionality :
- Ajax upload, like the upload module, no need to reload the page
- possibility to choose a FEATURED image, to select which image should be displayed when in a teaser.
-
like image field, possibility to change alt text and title.
add a CAPTION FIELD ??
-
possibility to re-arrange the order of the images by clicking on the UP and DOWN arrows.
Maybe even better with a DRAG AND DROP interface to re-arrange the order of the image !
I was about to post an HOWTO at drupal.org, when...
I was going to post an HOWTO as a book page at drupal.org, but I declined, since the parent drop down was so cluttered. Now, there are problems in how someone designed the site, but that's not what I will focus on.
A drop down is a very poor UI unit to use for a large collection of data. It kind of works ok for selecting a country (for Norwegians press O then arrow up, since Oman is the first country in the list after Norway, the last of the Ns), even though there are about 170 countries in those lists.
Read moreHowto: Creating user friendly mapping for non-drupal nerds
This howto will help you create a simple method for your clients to add locative information to a travelogue. I've been fiddling with a lot of options for doing this, including using feeds with gmap macros. Though gmap macro feeds have the advantage of offering specific marker types for the different feeds, I ended up using a method which does away with that feature, but gains tremendously in useability, due to the fact that the writer doesn't need to know the exact feed syntax and gmap macro syntax to make it work.
Read moreWebnode has great UI components. How can we share them with drupal developers?
Webnode understands usability and has excellent interfaces for many common website admin tasks. There are many very well done UI elements here that would work well throughout drupal core and many contrib modules, especially panels, asset, views and many others.
- Try a demo: http://www.webnode.com/en/demo/
- Click 'Website Builder' and customize your demo website
IRC Meeting on #drupal-themes Monday Jan 7 at 18.00 UTC
Happy New Year to everyone. Meet you all on monday.
Suggested topics:
- Usability Test at University of Minnesota
- Status of active projects
- Plans for 2008
Please post Topic suggestions as comment.
Read moreUsability Testing Plan
Last updated by silverwing on Thu, 2011-07-14 20:29
IMPORTANT: Editing this Document and Collaboration
This wiki page was created from node/7878 so that it can be collaborated on. This copy of the document is the primary/trunk/head copy of the document where all changes should be merged. Discuss this document on node/7878. Bevan/
Plan for Usability Testing at UMN, February 2008
Context
The University of Minnesota Libraries has made their usability lab available for formal usability testing on Drupal in February. For more details see the official announcement and follow-up discussion in the usability group.
Overview
This will be the first time Drupal has undergone any formal usability testing. The objective of this document is to identify audiences, scenarios and tasks that communicates a baseline understanding of Drupal’s usability for common tasks. Overall testing priority will be given to a user role we are describing as that of the Site Maintainer.
High Level Usability Goals
This round of testing will focus on the needs of users who maintain departmental or corporate websites and will seek to identify usability issues within the Drupal CMS that are associated with these needs.
Specific Goals Might Include:
* @COMMENT These are provisional goals; please feel free to add new goals or new versions of these goals /libsys
- Users with minimal web content management technology experience should be able to perform basic content management tasks with minimal direction. Such tasks might include adding pages; assigning links to content; locating and editing content; reverting previous revisions of content; adding comments; or assigning pages to "site sections".
- Users with an intermediate to advanced level of experience with web content management technologies should be able to perform critical site building and maintenance tasks with modest direction. Critical tasks might include creating new content data entry forms (content types); establishing permissions for interaction with site features; performing high-level site settings tasks, such as configuring the look and feel of the site, enabling/disabling site features (module settings); or establishing "site sections" and menus of links (outline, menus, blocks).
Drupal 6 Testing Overview
Woops, I should have used this page instead. This page is now duplicate of http://groups.drupal.org/node/7929. Bevan/
The following information represents the basic details of the February 2008 Drupal 6 Testing cycle. Feel free to add details as needed to this wiki page.
The Announcement: http://groups.drupal.org/node/7878
Current wiki page for details and planning; http://groups.drupal.org/node/7929
Read moreChx to Mentor Drupal in Season of Usability
I'm really happy to announce that Károly Négyesi (aka chx) has offered to be my technical mentor in my Season of Usability project on Drupal. Further Károly also promised to implement the results of the project; "I am making this program better and bigger by promising that I will code whatever you come up with".
Usability Testing - List Your Resources
It's been a while since I first learned about usability testing. As a result, I'm not very aware of good web-based tutorials and resources for beginners. I tend to refer back to Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests, which is kind of a bible in usability circles.
Any of you folks have good tutorials for neophyte testers? Anything on Boxes and Arrows, for example?
Read moreHelp Needed with Formal Usability Test Development
Note: the ongoing "official" testing plan document can be found here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/7929
As announced here http://drupal.org/node/204667, Drupal will undergo formal lab usability testing this coming February. This project builds on the already impressive work of the usability group and elsewhere. We feel honored to play a part in this ongoing effort.
The testing process begins with the identification of high-level goals; target audiences; common user tasks for these audiences; and a set of debriefing questions for the evaluators that we recruit for testing (users who test the product are called “evaluators”). It’s critical to the success of this project that we scope the goals, target audiences and tasks appropriately.
The U Libraries testing team has drafted a goal statement, target audience list, task list and proposed a variety of debriefing questions as a preliminary measure towards moving this process forward. We now need the Drupal community to help set priorities; propose and refine tasks; suggest debriefing questions; and to help out with various other tasks.
Read moreIcons for Drupal (meta document)
Part of the usability efforts is coming up with some Drupal specific icons. Icons show up here and there in Drupal core but more often in contributed modules. We should try to connect and align these efforts. Make them more consistent in application and look/feel.
Styleguides and design tips:
- updated for Leopard: Apple Human Interface Guidelines
To Core Developers; I Need You, Please. :)
I still haven't been able to establish a technical mentor for my SoU project. I need a Drupal developer with a fair amount of Drupal karma and a small interest in usability, for this project to be successful. I'll be plain; I'm directly asking Dries, core developers, and other similarly-respected folk in the Drupal community, for someone who can commit about 3 hours per week for three months.
