Hi again,
On 12/15/2014 12:33 PM, Pau Giner wrote:
* I'm not sure I like the phrase "Browse topics":
I have no strong opinion on the way to introduce the list of topics as
long it aligns with the user mental model.
Even if "contents" is consistent with the page metaphor of articles,
and may work for the classic talk pages (which are content pages
repurposed for conversations), I would like to use a concept that is
more specific to conversations to clearly anticipate to users what
they will see. It will be worth considering those aspects during our
research. So I already added them in our research draft
<http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/collab-research> to make sure we
identify issues on this area.
Yes, "Contents" doesn't exactly fit for
a discussion space, but with
"Browse" I would associate more than a one-dimensional list. I don't
have a strong opinion either... How about just "Topics"?
* The filters are AND'ed, right?
Yes. I don't think that OR'ed or complex combinations are needed (at
least I'd like to start simple and identify if there is a need for
more complex cases).
We can see how much of the standard use cases can be made
accessible
outside the 'advanced search' panel. If that panel turns into something
only power-users use, it might as well host some very advanced features.
* What does "Activity v" do, and what's "Anytime"?
For "Activity", the idea is to be able to provide more specific time
references (created, last reply, etc.). For cases such as, "what
happened to this topic I created last year around Wikimania dates?".
Regarding "Anytime" it was intended to be the default value (any
activity anytime) intended to allow going back to the default whenever
you change the time filter. If that it is the case, it needs to be
selected by default to avoid confusion.
Ah, ok. So this is some kind of
two-dimensional filter, where the first
part is a dropdown selector, and the second a row of buttons. Not sure
about the design details, but the function is useful.
Can you also say "Show me all activity since my last visit"?
That is a great idea. Any time period that we can present based on
relevant terms for the user sounds more useful than generic buckets.
Totally worth adding.
Well, the idea is basically just a Flow version of what
watchlists are
doing now. But if done right, Flow could do it better than now :-)
* "Showing n topics": n is the number of topics passing the
filter, right? They might not all be visible or even loaded at the
same time, so maybe "showing" is not quite right.
Yes, "showing" means that those topics are not filtered out, those
that are visible if the user scrolls the whole board.
From the user perspective, if infinite scroll works fluently there
should be no difference on whether topics are loaded in advance or as
they scroll.
Yes, but why not drop the "Showing"? But again, no strong
opinion here.
* I don't like the gray text for indicating closed topics. That
looks like they're not accessible, e.g. not yet loaded.
We can think on different visual treatments, but assuming the norm
would be to skip those we probably want something that makes them less
emphasised than the regular ones (e.g., adding an icon can draw too
much attention).
Hmm, if a closed topic shows up in my watchlist, that's
usually because
it has just been closed, and reading the closing statement is the most
interesting part of many discussions. This can also be the case for
older topics: I might look for answers, topics where consensus has been
established and summarized, rather than open questions. So what I want
to skip depends on the use case.
* Marking topics with recent activity
We need to be careful not to overload the list with too much color. We
need to look for a balance where the list of topics is the main aspect
but it is enhanced with some cues that allow you to find the relevant
ones quickly.
Agree. Maybe use different css classes which all map to the same
color
unless customized? This would also help accessibility through supporting
screen readers and workarounds for colorblindness.
What's the rationale for coloring the icons on the right? This
could be misunderstood as 'recently added to watchlist' or
'recently contributed to by myself'.
The idea is to provide quick scanability. On the left side you can
quickly find topics whit recent activity. The right side is about your
relationship with the topics, so you can see the ones that care most
to you (participated, or watching). For those which also have recent
activity, the icon turns blue too. That helps to focus on topics where
you participated and have recent activity without having to do the
intersection in your head for each item, just scan vertically looking
for blue star icons for example.
Hmm, that intersection is pretty much what the
watchlist does now, and
it should also do that for Flow content. I'm not sure if we need the
same intersection emphasized in the normal ToC. How about giving the
whole entry a faint colored background, corresponding to the color of
the bar (or icon) on the left? (Just throwing up more ideas to confuse
you, they're not necessarily consistent ;-)
In my icon-based concept, the user can very easily make intersections by
clicking one icon in the header line and then looking for the other one
in the filtered Toc.
I still think, with your current design, I as a reader might be tempted
to do the intersection in my head anyway: blue means new, star means
watched => blue star means newly watched, and analogous for my
contributions.
"Recent" means "since my last visit", right?
I'm not sure. It makes sense that users are interested in activity
since the last time they checked, but if a user follows a link and
goes back, do we expect all recent activity indicators go away because
the last visit was one second ago? Is clicking on a topic expected to
clear the recent activity (becoming more of an "read/unread" status)?
We probably need to give more thought on the specific logic.
Fully agree about the
"more thought". A good way for marking things as
read/unread, either automatically or manually, in a situation where
topics can be individually watchlisted but shown together, is very
non-trivial (but worth figuring out). It works ok, but not perfect with
the current watchlist system. How Flow currently interacts with Echo and
the watchlist I can't really tell, which is not good.
I'm undecided about the secondary entry point for advanced search.
That is something we want to check how users use it in practice. If
most users find the filtering panel when they need it, we may want to
get rid of the secondary entry point. If that is not the case, we may
want to either (a) emphasise the main entry point (e.g., opening it on
click and remove it when typing if no filters are added), (b) provide
a way to access the filtering panel from the ToC (if the ToC is where
users look for it) or (c) keep the secondary entry point as a less
immediate but safer option for those users not finding the primary
entry point.
Here's a more general idea about users finding things on the UI,
inspired by the way Pau's slides are arranged: One of the things we
could put in the white desert to the right of a Flow board is some kind
of help / context help / tutorial. The user could collapse it to a
button once it's no longer needed (and expand something else instead, or
put the ToC there).
Likewise the blue background and shape of the current filters
looks like a button. What happens if you click it?
Clicking on the blue filters will open the advanced search, where you
can change (or edit, if you prefer) them.
Hmm, so all these buttons do the same?
Sounds not quite optimal yet.
Here's another suggestion for the ToC/Search/Filter design.
Thanks for the input.
There are a couple of aspects whose purpose is not clear to me. One is
about the need to representing two binary status (e.g., filled and
outlined star), presenting one seems enough for the purpose of the ToC
(is watching topics something we expect users to do directly form
ToC?), and the other is about making each item in the ToC to have
multiple actions.
Two binary statuses? I meant only one: each icon is either
"there"
(filled), or "not there" (outlined or really not there). In some cases
one might want to provide an entry point to some action even though the
binary status is "not there", therefore the outlines. The watchlist icon
is a bit special, I agree, since it's a purely per-topic property, not
per-post. So the standard primary action "show watched posts" doesn't
make sense, therefore I suggested watching/unwatching. One could also
leave this icon without any action, depends a bit on the result of the
"how to mark things as read/unread" brainstroming. Also the number of
watched posts isn't too useful, one could have this icon without a
number overlay, and instead show the total number of posts for each
topic on the very right, outside the star.
Multiple actions: the idea is to have the (hopefully) most obvious
action on left-click ("show me the posts that cause this icon to show
here"), and other, very related actions nearby in the context(!) menu.
This would move the more common filter actions out of the advanced
search panel and leave the latter for even more advanced things.
I expect you don't like the old-fashioned right-click menu. One could
also have everything (explanation, primary and secondary actions) in a
mouseover menu like the "..." ones. That would slow down using the
primary action though.
I'm not sure. This isn't a fully thought through concept yet, more a
bunch of ideas.
Cheers
Hhhippo
