Planet Drupal english
Crowdsourced User Testing : going for a sustainable strategy
Verfasst von tommi am 22. August 2009 - 10:35
There are a lot UI Improvements under way for Drupal 7. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be sure if these really are improvements and we don't overlook small details that make the entire building crumble? How about ongoing, small-scale, crowdsourced user testing. Leisa Reichelt issued a similar call some time ago to test the admin header. A pleasing number of people tested the header and helped checking the names of the top-level categories and testing (probably confirming) the usefulness of the entire concept.
What this is up to is a sustainable concept that will ideally be an ongoing process. Apart from this mid-term goal there is also a very here-and-now one: we need to urgently test the D7UX stuff before Drupal 7 comes out or before the time even for small changes is over.
You can help by:
- do testing and upload the videos
- find some participants, if you don't want to do testing yourself
- be a testing participant if you don't know Drupal too well
A perfect participant has some web experience, has mastered things like ebay product selling forms and maybe has some experience in other cms's or blogging software. No. 2 of the above list would mean another motivated tester has won some participants and could carry out the tests with them. Personally I am willing to do quite some testing, this can be a lot of fun :) We need interviewers and test participants, so what about building up an infrastructure where we have
| Anhang | Größe |
|---|---|
| d7ux-head.zip | 5.11 MB |
Drupal UI Report - Screencast of Admin Overlay latest news
Verfasst von tommi am 6. August 2009 - 7:46The actual state of the admin overlay with the new Admin Theme has exciting stuff. Some of this is already known to those who follow the UI reworking for Drupal 7, but some will definitely be new. This is hopefully going to become a regular Screencast series dedicated to all kinds of Drupal UI stuff. Themes, great Interfaces like in Open Atrium, and at the moment of course specifically D7UX.
Screencast: D7UX Admin Header and Admin Overlay - Walkthrough
Verfasst von tommi am 17. Juli 2009 - 10:08This is the start of a screencast series. I am going to follow the D7UX Changes as they go to core or maturing more to get ready for core. What you are looking at when you play the video is a special version of drupal, that you can checkout via SVN from this Google repository: So don't be worried if you see something that breaks or looks pre-alpha: It won't have made its way to core. As pointed out in the video, there is quite some issues to overcome. This is also a call to action, if you are a dev and sympathise with the D7UX project: join the crowd and help pushing this along, so it will be shiny and intuitive. The main Issues this is being worked on are http://drupal.org/node/517688 and http://drupal.org/node/484820 An overview of all d7ux issues is here: http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/drupal?issue_tags=d7ux
The entire thing is geared towards
Social Rules in OSS Communities
Verfasst von tommi am 10. Juli 2009 - 7:31
What makes people rock and roll in OSS communities? After two years of hanging out in the Drupal Crowd, there have come some observations to me that I'd like to share.
Some People are frustrated, others envived. Some stay in very long, some leave. Some do a lot of work, others mainly consume. But to many of them, the Community is an important peer group and may even feel like home. Mostly over IRC, you communicate directly with people from Melbourne, Shanghai and Los Angeles. This alone has some drive that does not cease to fascinate me.
What parts OSS projects from commercial ones? Well, firstly, you don't get paid if you help out, and you do not have to pay to use it. This makes a cultural distiction that pulls in a different set of people. Some people don't even get what this is about, so don't expect them to join us. Some people
Build your Drupal Meta Module - Context, Spaces, Features, Patterns
Verfasst von tommi am 13. April 2009 - 2:56
Drupal is modular. Drupal is more modular. Sometimes you feel Drupal is _too_ modular. Example: The recommended best practice for building a mainainable and generic image gallery uses at least seven Modules: CCK, Views, Filefield, Imageapi, Imagecache, Imagefield, A batch uploader like image fupload plus a template file and css for your theme. Uff. And now here you go and explain to a beginner that Drupal is easy.
Thing is: in the end it is quite a simple structure. Recently I came to my personal best practice: Using multiple values for an imagefield and the new image fupload for slick batch uploads. With the new feature in imagefield to add captions to images even when using multiple values and the ability to rearrange the order with the drag and drop widget there is not much to miss. With some Views and Taxonomy magic one should be able to build _Really_ large multiuser galleries, and if you want to seperate the images better you make single nodes of each - good news image fupload also supports this option. Sounds like a missing link, eh?
Cinderella unfolds her beauty - Drupal UI Report
Verfasst von tommi am 28. Januar 2009 - 4:56There was a workful and modest lady who provided all kinds of service to the people. She was so happy serving she forgot to put on a beautiful dress. Also not few had a hard time to understand her and her unusual ways of doing things. Only the ones that took their time discovered all of her incredible beauty. But some day she also wanted to take part in the partying...
I think I do not have to mention who this lady is.
The recent developments in Drupal UI improvement really impress me. Summing them up reveals that the pace is quickening. Starting with my favourite: Form Builder. This wonderful and intuitive UI is not only getting Drupal up to par with other systems. Without having checked I believe it should take the lead in form building for non-commercial systems. If Nathan Haug and the Lullabots keep their promise and the module will seamlessly utilitize the forms API and be as conseqently used throughout Drupal 7 as the drag-and-drop feature is in D6 for menus, blocks and CCK - wow, I am beyond words :)
Module Page
Next for me comes the new Module page maintained by Philip Vergunst (skilip). This module (sure heading for core when mature) adresses a need in Drupal that was often expressed: What is the workflow when you upload a module? You upload it. Done. Now you go and enable it - go to modules page. To be able to use it, if you are not an administrator - go to access control Page. Now - where did the Maintainer put the settings page? I have seen grown men cry being unable to find the settings, that may even be moved with a new version. Ah - "By Module" page (Kudos to Webchick) to the rescue! Mostly presenting all settings
Default Admin Theme for D7
Verfasst von tommi am 5. Dezember 2008 - 5:38
Drupal has an option I haven't seen in any other CMS: You can set a theme for the admin section to your liking. As nice as it is, it raises serious UX problems especially for new users, if admin and frontend theme is the same (see UX study Baltimore: Where is my site?) There has been talk and action to cure this in a simple way: get a default administration theme into core.
Having learnt that core issues require determination and endurance, I'd like to make a fresh start (apart from an existing issue about that:(http://drupal.org/node/79023) by introducing some possible guidelines and candidates.
Guidelines
So what is this all about? Apart from seperating Front- and Backend optically, why should we want a seperate Admin theme and which requirements should it meet?
1. Clever use of Space
One thing that bugs me about Admin and settings pages in Drupal is the waste of space. Everything is rendered in a vertical manner, a lot of space is wasted because often only a third of the horizontal space is used. On the right see a typical example from the comment settings: the descriptions could easily also flow inside the red-lined area.
