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.
Factory Joe's Review
Copied from http://factoryjoe.pbwiki.com/FeedbackForDrupal6 so people can comment and act on it.
Please help turn the @TODOs into into tickets and patches!
Installation
- It's awesome that Drupal defaults to install.php if you haven't previously setup the site. That's a much better experience than having to know that you have to hit install.php first. Then again, it also means that you could be intercepted; unlikely but still something to consider.
Web Form Layout and Design Resources
Web Application Form Design
http://www.lukew.com/resources/articles/web_forms.html
Web Form Design in the Wild, Part I
http://www.uie.com/articles/forms-fairmont-hotel/
Web Form Design in the Wild, Part 2
http://www.uie.com/articles/form_design_wild/
I've Posted a Long Time UI Comment Bug to the Core Issues Queue
Hi Gang,
There is a small but nasty UI bug in the comment module, that's been around forever:
When you click on the link below a node that says, "Add new comment", the form label presented is, "Reply." It should say, "Add new comment." This labeling bug works against the otherwise awesome threading built into the comment module.
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Continuing discussion from BADCamp usability session
I facilitated a session at the Bay Area Drupal Camp (BADCamp). About 40-50 people had a good discussion around the usability in Drupal.
I recommend the discussion format for similar sessions because the biggest need is getting people involved. There are success stories around specific UI redesigns, such as projects on Drupal.org and the administration front page introduced in Drupal 5. However, the overall usability process and vision is still taking shape.
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Welcome to Drupal. From one designer to another.
Hello, I have been contacted by at least four designers in the last few weeks who are eager to contribute to the Drupal project. I think we have crossed a user experience designer tipping point.
Now that I am a Drupal insider, I think we need someone else to write an open letter to designers who are interested in contributing to Drupal.
Here's an initial attempt to attract Information Architect based on feedback from DrupalCon Vancouver. http://drupal.org/node/49297
Any designers who are familiar with the Drupal project who are willing to help bridge to design communities.
Read moreSeason of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and ID
From: Ellen Reitmayr ellen /at/ openusability point org
Hi,
those of you who participate in the sprint will learn a bit more about
the Season of Usability on Sunday - so far, you may have a look at the
freshly published website!
Cheers,
Ellen
Season of Usability - Usability students get involved with Open Source
First Season of Usability finished successfully!
Season of Usability is a series of sponsored student projects to
encourage students of usability, user-interface design, and interaction
Ten Ways to Make More Humane Open Source Software
http://humanized.com/weblog/2007/10/05/make_oss_humane/
The List
Do
- Get a Benevolent Dictator
Someone who has a vision for the UI. Someone who can and will say “no” to features that don’t fit the vision. - Make the Program Usable In Its Default State
Don’t rely on configurable behavior. It adds complexity, solves little, and most users will never touch it anyway. Usable default behavior is required. - Design Around Tasks
Hitting the issue queue hard
Lately I've been scouring the User Experience issue queue. I've triaged a lot of issues out to more appropriate projects. If I've done so in error, I'm sorry.
After I panned out a lot of obvious issues. I've found some genuinely interesting suggestions. I would like to welcome everyone to come visit the issue queue for a few minutes and take a look around at the issues.
LINK: http://drupal.org/project/issues/user_experience
Read moreIRC Meeting
Monday 22nd October 2007 @ 1800 UTC (time conversions) in IRC #drupal-themes
Last week I stumbled on a meeting in IRC, discussing Drupal usability. It was a productive session and a nice way of getting like minded people together. We agreed to meet up next week too, but the only reference to the time is buried deep in another post. If you take a look at http://groups.drupal.org/node/6516#comment-18934, you will see some brief minutes from that last meeting.
Read moreFYI: FLOSS Usability Sprints
Confirmed Projects for Upcoming Round:
-
Mozilla
Firefox, Thunderbird, Bugzilla, and more great software!
http://www.mozilla.org/ -
Wiser Earth
Networking site for people interested in NGOs.
http://www.wiserearth.org/ -
Chandler (From the designer of Lotus 1-2-3 Mitch Kapor!!)
Personal information manager designed for small group collaboration
http://www.osafoundation.org/ -
Socialtext
Enterprise Wiki.
http://www.socialtext.com/ -
Social Source Commons
Allows organizations to share software tools.
http://www.socialsourcecommons.org/
Coordinating efforts on Usability Improvements
We had lots of good ideas at Drupalcon, and even more good ideas here. Obviously a lot of people see the need of improving Drupals Usability. Als probably always in open Source Development, the problem is to organize and actually use the energy to yield results.
So how about collecting the areas to work on here and actually set up teams to work on it. I'll try to name the ones that were already mentioned and add a few.
<
ul>
image in core - from a users perspective
Hey people
ive just posted a wishlist for the image in core, that walkah were talking bout at the drupalcon barcelona.
i thought it would be a good idea to share this - so we can figure out what we want in this "imageincoreoneandforall" :)
link to the original post at my blog: http://morten.dk/node/174
flickr screens: http://flickr.com/photos/mortendk/tags/drupalimagesincorewishlist/
its still a working draft so spelling errors missing stuff etc ... ;)
Dear Walkah - the wishlist for images in core
original post http://morten.dk/node/174/
Usability Survey Wiki
So this Wiki page should be the right content type to collaborate on the survey. I'm willing to go to the bitter end... ;) Comments and explications here and there could be good, I suggested formatting you'll see
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Easier access to help pages
Well... I was inspired by Dries' speech to lend some of my thinking and time to improving the user interfaces and usability of Drupal for the next release. A very basic idea I had was improving access to help pages in a Drupal site.
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Views UI mockups
Hi. I'd like to document some links to Views2 UI mockups here. Links to the files have been bouncing around in IRC, maybe this can be a place for further thoughts on how Views2 could best present it's functionality to the user. I'll be updating any new screens here.
These all concern the “create new view” part of the UI, looking for ways to present all the available settings in a more compact layout.
first:
- views2-merlinsmockup.png
Usable expandable menus on Core - Creating a mission group
The new Digg menu is highly usable.
Take a look at http://digg.com/news/technology. Try to click on the down arrows to the right of each menu item on the top strip and you will see a menu folding down, with sub menus folding down as well. Also, all the contents of the menu are displayed in the second horizontal strip.
Improving the drupal core menu navigation to create a digg-like menu would be fantastic - it's very high usability.
What do you think would be the requirements for such a task?
Do you know of a drupal menu which is currently doing something similar?
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Dries' presentation
In his State of Drupal presentation at DrupalCon Barcelona Dries mentioned usability as one of the key factors in improving Drupal.
One of his practical advises was to do user testing.
So let's act upon that. Pick a friend, relative, colleague. Show them Drupal, let them try it out, and watch and listen them doing it. See what works, what they are struggling with, what their frustrations are. And write it down. Here in this group.
It doesn't have to be scientific research. Any feedback will help.
To structure this a bit: I believe 4 user roles can be defined.
Read moreRough summary of our talk during Drupalcon
Topic
General Usability Issues and the admin section in special
Course of the talk
Most people agreed, that the user interface in drupal is not very good. We did not discuss much what improve it, but rather thinking about how in terms of organiztion it could be done. We concentrated on mending the admin Interface.
Luckily Neill Drumm was present, who is the current Maintainer of Drupal 5 Core. He gave us the core developers Perspective and gave recommendations on how to do it best and how to communicate with Developers.
So we agreed on some points:
The following statement about usability applies to me:
