Here are the results from user 7 (in our menus user testing series) & user 8 both with the 23119.17.diff patch applied.
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lessbloat
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lessbloat
Two more menus user tests, focusing on this layout concept: User 5 (in the series) & User 6.
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Andrea Rennick
Can you add to your test adding a link to the home page?
From what I see with new users, they make a page called home and add that to the menu instead of filling out the custom link box.
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Andrea Rennick
Just to add to this… many new users do not realize that their URL is their home page.
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Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic)
Yeah, this is a pain point for many, I’m sure; it’s a pretty non-obvious process to add “Home” to main navigation, and unfortunately one that varies from theme to theme. :-/
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lessbloat
Hmm… That’s a good point. What if we added a new meta box called “common links” which just had a couple checkbox options:
- Home
- Log in
- Anything else? RSS?
If we added that, where would we put it? Now that the “Theme Locations” meta box is on another screen, we could probably get away with:
What do you think?
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Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic)
Just thinking out loud… since so many use WordPress as a CMS, you could argue that a checkbox for “Blog” makes sense. Maybe have it show only if someone has set a Posts page in their Reading settings (so hidden by default) and get the menu link from that setting?
IMHO RSS is an edge-case, but it can’t hurt.
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Andrea Rennick
Log in definitely, as it is a pain to add it otherwise. (If you want it to be dynamic)
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Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic)
How about a link in the yellow success message that says something like “would you like to add this menu to your site” or something similar? Seems like a good way to prompt them, and also links them back to where they can make that setting change.
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lessbloat
I like that. We’ll test it.
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Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic)
Instead of “Label” how about “Display as” or “Display link as” instead? I think that would be easier to grok the “link text” for the typical (non-techical) new user.
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Siobhan
How about “Link Text”? That would be more intuitive. A “label” is usually attached to something else (like a form field, or suitcase, etc)
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lessbloat
Ya, I think I’ll test “Link Text” next – see what comes of it.
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lessbloat
Last Tuesday we tested two users on some menus scenarios.
On friday I posted a couple hypotheses and patches for potential improvements.
This morning, I tested two additional users with these patches applied: User 3 (in the series) & User 4.
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mrwweb
I’ve been following your menu testing recently and find the issue of indicating iterative saves of the menu. The fade-out notification does work, but I also wonder if it’ll run into some similar problems of people not remembering if/when they last saved.
This may be a bust of a suggestion, but I thought I’d at least mention it. What if menu items that have changed state (new position, new label, etc.) since last save are marked in some way (maybe a light blue shade or some kind of icon) that then goes away when the menu is saved.
Another idea that’s not specific to saving menus is whether timestamping the save notifications might be useful. It could get cluttered, but it would answer the question of “when did I last save” quite literally.
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lessbloat
I was actually thinking about fading in (not out). That way we don’t have to mess with timing for the fade out (longer messages needing longer times, etc…). I think with the fade in, they’ll at least see the yellow message bar visually change (if just briefly).
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lessbloat
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Jack Tarantino
Ooh! A message that widgets were saved would be really helpful! I generally have fast hosting and a fast connection. Sometimes I don’t even notice the spinner come up at all when something saves. Should I open a Trac ticket for this?
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lessbloat
If there is not already one, sure! Thanks.
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Travis Northcutt
What software was used for these videos?
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lessbloat
usertesting.com
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Sheri Bigelow
What else (related to widgets) can I add if I retest these scenarios in the future?
I’ve observed users having trouble with widgets when they’ve added ALOT of them (probably too many). Perhaps test adding/deleting/editing/rearranging widgets when there are a bunch of them on the page.
I’ve heard that accessibility is an issue when it comes to widgets. Test with visually impaired users if you can.
The “First Front Page Widget Area” and the “Second Front Page Widget Area” sections only work when a static front page is set. Should they just be hidden until the user sets a static front page?
I would vote yes to either hiding them or making them visible-but-inactive with a note explaining why (if that’s possible?).
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adamsilverstein
i wrote a possible patch for not seeing the spinner on a fast host (or locally) in http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23120, wondering if any other buttons need similar treatment.
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C?t?lin Dogaru
What else (related to widgets) can I add if I retest these scenarios in the future?
Please take a look at: #19159. It may be useful.
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lessbloat
I ran two users through a set of “menus” scenarios this morning.
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Helen Hou-Sandi
#23055 for the mystery 0 bug
Menu location previewing is possible via the customizer – wonder if there’s a way to put all that together. The confusion and fact that menus can be used in other places makes me wonder if the menu+item management screen is even the right place for menu assignment, but without a better idea, I hesitate to even say that.
I recall a desire for dismissable admin notices a few releases ago, but not sure if there was ever a ticket about it. Maybe worth revisiting as a whole.
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lessbloat
I put another user through the media scenarios this morning. This time I asked that they adjust alignment and size.
You can download the video here.
My observations:
Step 1: Login
No problems.
Step 2: Publish already uploaded image
No problems.
Step 3: Preview post
No problems.
Step 4: Publish 2 images to a single post
4:00 – Even though the 2 images she added were not set to align right, they appeared to be aligned right when inserted into the post. Is this a side affect of the user aligning the first image right in Step 2?
Step 5: Download additional images
No problems.
Step 6: Upload new images & publish gallery
7:40 – User gets confused that she doesn’t see the gallery images she just added, and says, “What just happened here?”.
7:50 – User tries to click back button to get back to media modal (cancels it). User is looking for a way to get back to the gallery settings page.
8:05 – “What just happened here? I’m not even sure if I added them to the gallery or not. I’m confused…”.
8:50 – She gets frustrated and decides to start over with this step.
10:38 – She decides to add the images with “Insert into post”, instead of using “Create a new gallery”. She thinks this (the media library) is her gallery.
12:17 – One of the descriptions that she entered did not show up in the editor.Summary
- She did great, until she got to the gallery step. There appears to be a general confusion around how adding images to a gallery is different from just selecting images and adding them to the editor. The generic gallery div that shows up in the editor after you add a gallery to the post seems very confusing for users.
- Once you set one of the images to align right, each subsequent image you add is aligned right when inserted into the editor (even though you don’t specifically set the new image to align right).
- The generic gallery div (with the camera icon in it) appears to be confusing users. We should definitely add a description to that div – something like “Your gallery images will be displayed here”. I think we should also display the “edit gallery” button in that div at all times (not just on click). The user was searching around for a way to edit the gallery she just added, but gave up after a while and decided to start all over instead.
- One of the captions she entered didn’t make it to the editor.
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JerrySarcastic
Kinda tough to watch her flail as soon as she sees the generic gallery div; I agree that it is not very helpful for new users. How about a div that shows the actual gallery thumbs (ghosted out) so a visual indicator that the gallery has been added correctly is present.
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Helen Hou-Sandi
There were TinyMCE views that enabled this kind of display and were doing it for galleries, but they had to be backed out due to issues caused too late in the release.
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Bart Dabek (WebCultured.com)
Hi Dave, what’s the workflow for inserting custom sized images with random order? You guys omitted those parameters from the current UI?
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Helen Hou-Sandi
Coming soon: Weekly updates
Part of the duties of a team rep for each area of contributors is to be responsible for a weekly update on the group. At this moment, there is not an established UI team rep, but as a core development team representative, I’m happy to step in until new elections are done sometime in the near-ish future.
Part of our UI group discussion at the Community Summit was about how we can make these weekly updates both informational and effective, especially when it comes to attracting and retaining contributors. Here’s what we’re thinking:
- A breakdown of what we did this week, such as discussions held (with links to IRC as applicable), patches uploaded/worked on, and what’s changed in core in a more prose-y manner.
- Links to ideas from the community at large, which would likely be blog posts on other sites, including your own. Discussion would be encouraged over on those posts rather than here – the creator should be able to really take ownership and pride in their idea and be centrally involved in the discussion. The idea is to both expose some of the great ideas that are happening and open up a platform for idea generation that isn’t “from the top” or carrying the official weight that gets associated with a post on the Make P2s, which are largely status-driven rather than hypothetical.
- Weekly IRC chat summary with anything not covered above.
- What needs to get done this week, including any assignments that have been made and ones that need volunteers. We’re thinking this will be a great step toward exposing more ways to get involved in case you’re still figuring things out.
Thoughts? Love it, hate it?
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karmatosed
I really like this idea be great to keep up with things. The last point will help greatly in finding ways in for me and others also so that’s really cool. Not everyone can every time get to the IRC meeting so it’s a great way to keep up to date and involved.
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McGarityDotMe
All of this helps me out, as I’m trying to get my feet wet and understand more about sub-groups like this I’m interested in participating with. The IRC chats have been where I’ve started, but that’s often like jumping into the deep end of a pool after a swim lesson.
I especially like the last bullet point, as it’s not immediately clear to this n00b what’s in flight, what’s about to start, etc. -
lessbloat
Yep. +1 to all of it.
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Jane Wells
I was going to post this proposal to the team reps blog, and will, but since you posted this, I’ll pre-empt myself and post my thoughts here as well.
I’ve been thinking more about this since our team reps discussion at the summit, and I’m still thinking we should re-jigger the UI group. When we talk about core UI, it really seems like that discussion should be happening as a part of the core project, rather than sidelined as a separate group. When I started the UI group, it was because we weren’t a project that really had design contributors yet, and I wanted to change that, but it would have been disruptive to try to get that started on wpdevel (as it was called then). Now that it’s make/core, and now that there are a number of designers (members of this group) participating actively in core, I think it’s time for a change to recognize that core UI is not a separate project, it is an integral part of core.
At the same time, there are design needs across the WordPress project, like for events, documentation, site improvements, etc. Just as developing a system of team reps was intended to put other contributions on a level with core, I believe it’s time to rethink the UI group altogether.
What I’d like to see is the stuff going on as “the UI group” currently to be treated as a regular core component (with component owner, if that’s still the plan post-summit) rather than an entirely separate group. I’m thinking the same thing about Accessibility. If something isn’t a separate, sovereign group that gets to make decisions (in this case, UI decisions still are ultimately made by the core team/release leads, not by a standalone UI group), then it should be an active part of the main group. In other words, I think it’s time for UI contributors to level up to the main core team. Updates about what is happening with core UI would be part of the regular core team updates.
Then, we’d create a Design Corps of all the designers (graphic, interaction, web, print, you name it) that would be contributing to the project as a whole, rather than just core, and to all design needs, not just UI. Each of the contributor groups would have its own embedded contributing designers (like the core ui contributors), while the design corp *group* would be a place to share resources, discuss design problems across teams, and for team reps to post requests for design assistance when needed. This would solve several problems (other groups don’t have design resources, and they see the UI group as limited to CSS or usability).
I will admit that this is basically a ripoff of how Automattic handles design (just as our new contributor group blogs and team reps are a ripoff of Automattic’s team updates system). The Automattic design group system has been in play for three and a half years now, and I think it works really well. It allows designers to be integral members of project teams, while also being part of a broader design group.
Anyway, I’ll be proposing this to the team reps for consideration, but would like you guys to be thinking about it, too. @lessbloat and @chexee, as UI Group members who have experienced the Automattic model first-hand may be the best able to comment on whether it is a good model.
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Helen Hou-Sandi
+100000000000 to the overall direction of this group within the project as a whole. Siobhan’s post about handbooks earlier is in a similar vein – UI isn’t a separate handbook, but a component of each contributing area’s handbook. I also think it would be really helpful to promote areas beyond the core web application for folks to actively contribute to – it’s definitely different than ideas for, say, a website. I see plugin developers especially liking having a way to join forces with UI/UX-minded types
P.S. Hey everybody, do get involved in the handbooks if you’re able and willing!
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Siobhan
Yes! Handbooks are cool and awesome and people should get involved!
Also, I think a design corps group is an excellent idea. I have been thinking that we’ll need design people to help out with making the handbooks look beautiful and I had no idea where to look. This would solve the problem for me
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lessbloat
Love it. I think that’s a great idea.
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Mel Choyce
This sounds like a great way to create more opportunities for designers to get involved. Awesome idea!
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studionashvegas
Multidisciplinary groups like what you’re suggesting are very common in the agency setting, and (from what I’ve experienced) seem to work very well, as all of the parts know what’s going on (which leads to a more cohesive experience).
+1
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karmatosed
Sounds like a great idea and gives lots of scope for getting involved which is really cool.
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Amy Hendrix (sabreuse)
Yay! Destroy the silos!
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Chelsea Otakan
The Design Corps within Automattic work pretty well, IMO. We are a tight group and do our best to communicate well with each other.
I really like the concept of spreading out the UI group to include design across the WP community. A lot of designers want to pitch in, but their skills might not be the best fit for core, but there’s currently no formal way to pitch in anywhere else.
In short: Jane said all the things already
Sounds great to me! Weekly check in post for each group would be helpful. -
Sheri Bigelow
+1 I like the proposal. Seems to me developers would be more likely to reach out to a multifaceted design group vs. the current setup which is pretty intensely focused on Core UI.
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acsearles
I’ve sat on the sidelines for a long time, wanting to get more involved but not knowing where to get my feet wet. I’ve been following along, reading what I can and trying to stay up-to-date on the happenings of this group. So, I think this could help more people have an easier entry point into contributing. So I can continue to keep watching and when I see some low hanging fruit I’ll be able to pick a few things off. Eventually, as I get more of a grasp about what’s going on, I’ll be able to contribute in a more substantial way.
Jane, I also really like the idea of designers becoming apart of other groups that are working on other projects. I know that in my line of work I do best when working on a team of people with different skill sets, then coming back to the group of designers to share ideas and critique.
Sounds like so many good things came out of the summit. I’ll be excited to get started. And hopefully we can see everyone in Birmingham at our next WordCamp. Which reminds me, @saracannon, we need to get that started really really soon.
a
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RDall
I really like where this is going… I also agree with what Jane said as well… The UI group should be more then just the core dev… As I have struggled to find a place that I can contribute too that both use my strengths and fits WordPress needs as well…
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Helen Hou-Sandi
A summary of the Community Summit discussion on the UI group has been published. Thanks to @sabreuse for her wonderful note-taking! Feel free to discuss the notes, and do hold us accountable for our action item. Weekly summaries will also begin very soon.
http://make.wordpress.org/summit/2012/11/06/core-ui-team-discussion/
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karmatosed
That all sounds really cool. I will openly admit I really want to contribute to the UI team but had a hard time finding a way to and was a little daunted. I have contributed in other areas but found the UI team a bit harder to find a way in with. Having projects that can bring those of us new to the team into things would be great. I look forward to hopefully finding a way to get involved.
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Helen Hou-Sandi
Do you mind describing what you’ve tried or thought about trying so far? Just for data/things to think about as we constantly evaluate what we do.
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karmatosed
Sure, my first starting point was watching the blog and getting to know the blog posts. I found the discussion very lively which was really cool. I then started attending the dev chats and tried to get involved in the dashboard but every time I did something seemed to have been agreed outside of the chats or was already assigned as a task so it was hard to find a way in to contribute. I was made very welcome I’d like to make that clear and nothing I’m saying is against anyone, I just got lost from the welcome to the doing
I have in a few cases responded to things in discussion threads though, so I have tried through that but would love to do a bit more than just comment.
I do front end code and design so was open to either as a contribution. It totally may have been the time I tried to join in and that everything was already allocated by then, however it seemed that an extra hand wasn’t needed and everything was already tasked up.
I am involved in the BuddyPress side of things and have a past in Open Source so aware of the ‘get stuck in’ nature of contributing and love it. I’m not usually a wall flower over things so found it odd how hard it felt trying to start.
I really don’t mean that comment against anyone as know nothing is perfect and it’s as much down to me as it is anyone when contributing comes in. It was just hard to find a place to ‘get stuck in’ that wasn’t already occupied.
I’d love to work out a way to get involved though as feel whilst I do give to a side project (BuddyPress), I want to give back to the core project also. Maybe some clear areas / teams would help those of us circling around wanting to get involved but not seeing a way in beyond commenting? I know it’s never an easy solution and grateful that it’s being reviewed so hopefully more people (myself included) can step up to get involved.
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Helen Hou-Sandi
Thanks for responding
On the UI front, I’ll keep an eye out for you in UI chats (and make sure to pipe up, especially at the roll call part – we’re trying to get better about that so we know who’s around). Right now we tend to get bogged down in what’s needed specifically for the release as we approach RC and release stages, but even just getting used to regulars is helpful.-
karmatosed
Thank you and yes mid cycle is totally understandable of being a hectic time.
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lessbloat
To change things up, I tested a different set of scenarios this morning. I asked the user to add:
- A regular post
- A post with a gallery
- An audio MP3
- A video from Vimeo
You can download the video here.
My observations:
Step 1: Login
No problems.
Step 2: Preview your blog
No problems.
Step 3: Add text post
1:25 – I said “enter the description of “welcome to my blog” – and she didn’t make the connection that I wanted her to add it to the editor (that’s my bad).
Step 4: Where would you click
No problems. She correctly chose “Media Library”.
Step 5: Add gallery post
4:25 – User was confused – thought she’d see the images she just added in the editor (instead the generic gallery camera block was there). So, she tried to go through the process again.
5:18 – “Okay, so I don’t feel like it inserted it, cause it doesn’t show the media”.
5:50 – She click away to the media library, and tries to add the images in the media library to a gallery (we’ve seen this before with one of the other users).
6:45 – She decides to publish it anyway, and view what it looks like.Step 6: Add Audio post
7:10 – When asked to add a MP3 file to a post (from a URL I gave her), she clicked the “Add Media” button, then clicked “Embed From URL”, and pasted in the URL. When she pasted in the URL, it said http://http://URL.mp3 (with 2 http://’s).
Step 7: Add Video post
8:04 – When asked to embed a video from a URL, she clicked the “Add Media” button and used “Embed From URL” to paste the link.
Step 8: Preview your blog
No problems.
Summary
- This user was confused that she didn’t visually see the gallery images that she had added to the post. If we can’t show a preview of the actual images, could we add a one line description like, “Your gallery images will be shown here”, either just above or just below the camera icon?
- Are we confusing users by having a top level link called “Media Library” in addition to the new media modal “Media Library” link? This is the second time I’ve seen a user resort to clicking on the main left nav “Media Library” link when trying to figure out an issue within a specific post.
- If the user pastes a full URL into the “Embed From URL” box, and “http://http://” results, can we just auto-remove the extra http:// with JS?
- When I asked her to embed a video from a URL, she clicked the “Add Media” button, and tried to embed the Vimeo video URL through “Embed From URL”. I think that’s pretty logical seeing as a video is “media”. How difficult would it be to parse “Embed From URL” for the video embed URL’s, and then treat them different (so that instead of a link being added, the video embed magically happens for them)?
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John Blackbourn (johnbillion)
If the user pastes a full URL into the “Embed From URL” box, and “http://http://” results, can we just auto-remove the extra http:// with JS?
How difficult would it be to parse “Embed From URL” for the video embed URL’s, and then treat them different
I think these are two good arguments toward doing an AJAX call to insert this data into the post content instead of just inserting it with JavaScript. That way we can, for example, run
esc_url()on the embed URL and change the behaviour for oEmbed-supported URLs. -
John Blackbourn (johnbillion)
The “Embed From URL” button text is also misleading, as it doesn’t actually embed anything. It just inserts a link. This is especially noticeable (and especially poor behaviour) if you try to “embed” an image from a URL and end up with just a link to it.
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sanchothefat
Hi, this might be of interest – I’ve written a plugin that extends the functionality of the ‘Upload/Embed from URL’ tab.
It runs the URL through the oEmbed class and if there’s a hit it treats the embed like an attachment which when inserted into the post is inserted as the link within an [embed] shortcode so it has a fallback and CSS hook rather than just a plain text URL. Maybe that approach would help with the kind of confusion described?
The code is fairly straightforward using existing filters/actions.
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karmatosed
This user was confused that she didn’t visually see the gallery images that she had added to the post. If we can’t show a preview of the actual images, could we add a one line description like, “Your gallery images will be shown here”, either just above or just below the camera icon?
That makes me think of the avatars you have of people in conversation on github. May be a nightmare to do but some area showing thumbnails would make galleries less hidden.
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lessbloat
One more for your viewing pleasure. This time I made sure to update my local install to trunk.
You can download the video here.
My observations:
Step 1: Login
No problems.
Step 2: Publish already uploaded image
No problems.
Step 3: Preview post
No problems.
Step 4: Publish 2 images to a single post
No problems.
Step 5: Download additional images
No problems.
Step 6: Upload new images & publish gallery
7:12 – “Upload more files” button FTW! Adding that button made a huge improvement. Nice job Koop!
7:40 – In the gallery view, she didn’t see the “Describe this image…” boxes below each image.
8:10 – There may be a bug here. Select an image. Add a caption in the right column. Click “Insert into post”. You’ll get an image inside of a caption short code (which doesn’t look right).Summary
- This test was a huge success in my book.
- She didn’t see the “Describe this image…” textboxes below each image. Should we focus() on the first “describe this image…” box when you land on the gallery screen?
- A possible bug at 8:10 when adding a caption.
lessbloat, 
Joey Kudish 8:20 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Sweet! this is looking good!
Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture) 8:23 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
User testing is so awesome. Maybe we should get more general with the link in the updated notice. “Manage your site’s menus” or something.
Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture) 8:31 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
After watching #7, maybe change it to:
Main Menu has been updated. Assign a theme location for this menu, or use it in a widget.
It also occurs to me maybe we should have a “Manage your widget menus” link somewhere on or around the theme location metabox. Thoughts?
lessbloat 8:35 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Copy change: Nice. I like it.
Widget menus link: Not sure, I think I’d have to see it.
Jerry Bates (JerrySarcastic) 9:22 pm on January 11, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I notice that User 7 did not correctly set the Custom Menu Widget to the Sites I Love menu. She left it set to Main Menu, which is filled by default instead… Maybe it would be better to have the Widget show a list with checkboxes (of the available menus) with none of them checked by default? Seems like an easy way to avoid that mistake.
Perhaps if the Custom Menu widget was similar to the Categories metabox on the Add Menu screen? I.E. has a list with checkboxes for the menus, plus tabs at top for Recent, View All, and Search. That would add some parity between creating a menu, and configuring the Custom Menu widget.