Hi,
Users of the future Wikimedia Phabricator will have a very simple and straightforward interface to create and edit tasks. Bugzilla's UI was one of the top complaints from new/casual users, and we can fix this in Phabricator easily. Currently we are testing this setup in fab.wmflabs.org, where you can see an example:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the "Points" field is not there).
Advanced users needing to prioritize tasks, assign them to someone, and resolve them can join the Triagers team in order to get the additional permissions:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/project/view/74/
We are still fine tuning this process at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T64 -- your feedback is welcome.
Thoughts along the way:
== One ==
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the "Points"
field is not there).
What if I don't have this link?
I tried click the + at the top of the screen. This gave me a menu that says: Create New: Maniphest Task Pholio Mock Paste
As some people already complained, I don't know what Maniphest, Pholio and Paste are. (Come to think of it, I guess that Paste is kinda like Pastebin, but that's because I'm a developer.)
I quite like the big "Report a Bug" button on the main screen of Bugzilla, although I'd be the first to admit that the screen that appears after click it is pretty awful.
== Two == The Create New Task screen.
First thought: It looks a lot like web-based email around 2003! :)
The above is not a bad thing. Email composition is fairly simple and common and the design is OK.
*However*, since it is so similar to email, it's all the more confusing when you get to the details. In email, the usual order of fields is To, Cc, Subject, Body. The order here is Title (subject), CC (there's no "To"), Projects (What am I supposed to write there?), Points (OK, you asked to ignore that), Description (Body).
I can get used to it, but if it's for more general public, then you must take into account that lots of people don't bother reading field labels and get very confused.
== Three == I tried typing "MediaWiki" in projects and got an auto-completion with an umbrella icon. "Why umbrella?", I thought. And then I got it :)
== Four == Another thought: I searched for the attachment icon. I found it, but I am not sure that it would be easy to find for all users. I might be subjective, thought, because I upload a lot of screenshots and mileage may vary for other users.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-08-27 10:18 GMT+03:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
Hi,
Users of the future Wikimedia Phabricator will have a very simple and straightforward interface to create and edit tasks. Bugzilla's UI was one of the top complaints from new/casual users, and we can fix this in Phabricator easily. Currently we are testing this setup in fab.wmflabs.org , where you can see an example:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the "Points" field is not there).
Advanced users needing to prioritize tasks, assign them to someone, and resolve them can join the Triagers team in order to get the additional permissions:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/project/view/74/
We are still fine tuning this process at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T64 -- your feedback is welcome.
-- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Hi,
On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, Amir E. Aharoni amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il wrote:
Thoughts along the way:
== One ==
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the "Points"
field is not there).
What if I don't have this link?
We still have to define the content of the homepage, so there. More about the content of the soon-to-become homepage at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T12
See also https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help#Creating_a_task
I tried click the + at the top of the screen. This gave me a menu that says:
Create New: Maniphest Task Pholio Mock Paste
Now it says
Create New: Task Mockup Paste
(Come to think of it, I guess that Paste is kinda like Pastebin, but that's because I'm a developer.)
Also like Copy&Paste, a term most users landing in that page will be familiar with. But anyway, if you clicked that button because you wanted to create a task, "Create New: Task" is a clear choice now.
*However*, since it is so similar to email, it's all the more confusing when you get to the details. In email, the usual order of fields is....
But this is not an email interface. It is a task creation interface. If you want to create a task, "Title" is a clear concept, "CC" is probably clear as well (and if not, leaving it empty is just fine), the fact that tasks are classified into "Projects" is a familiar concept too (and if not, you can also leave it blank), and "Description" doesn't need any explanation.
you must take into account that lots of people don't bother reading field labels and get very confused.
Only Title and Description accept free text, so getting it wrong is actually somewhat difficult. :) I think this is quite of a low barrier for any English speaking user of MediaWiki of Wikimedia sites. Even the "English speaking" part can be improved in the future (but I'm digressing here).
== Three ==
I tried typing "MediaWiki" in projects and got an auto-completion with an umbrella icon. "Why umbrella?", I thought. And then I got it :)
Good! :)
The list of projects we have currently in fab.wmflabs.org is quite random (i.e. you were lucky to find a "MediaWiki" project, created just for testing purposes long time ago). By Day 1 we will have a full list of real projects, type-ahead should offer sensible results, and icons of projects will follow a consistent guideline.
== Four == Another thought: I searched for the attachment icon. I found it, but I am not sure that it would be easy to find for all users. I might be subjective, thought, because I upload a lot of screenshots and mileage may vary for other users.
Maybe you and me are getting old? ;) Note that, strictly speaking, users are not "attaching" (clip metaphore) but uploading a file that can be used anywhere and linking it to the description / comment, all at once. The tooltip says "Upload File" and you see an "up" arrow in a cloud. This is in fact a character from Awesome Font, so if you find a better alternative at https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/ we can propose it upstream.
Thanks for the replies.
Another thought: I searched for the attachment icon. I found it, but I
am
not sure that it would be easy to find for all users. I might be subjective, thought, because I upload a lot of screenshots and mileage
may
vary for other users.
Maybe you and me are getting old? ;) Note that, strictly speaking, users are not "attaching" (clip metaphore) but uploading a file that can be used anywhere and linking it to the description / comment, all at once. The tooltip says "Upload File" and you see an "up" arrow in a cloud. This is
in
fact a character from Awesome Font, so if you find a better alternative at https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/ we can propose it upstream.
Sorry for being unclear.
I meant not so much the appearance of the icon, but the fact that it is so small and that it appears on a toolbar with quite a lot of other small icons. If a user knows that such an icon is supposed to be there, it's possible that the user will find it, but a new user may need a separate explanation.
-- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore
2014-08-27 19:19 GMT+03:00 Quim Gil qgil@wikimedia.org:
Hi,
On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
Thoughts along the way:
== One ==
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the
"Points"
field is not there).
What if I don't have this link?
We still have to define the content of the homepage, so there. More about the content of the soon-to-become homepage at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T12
See also https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Help#Creating_a_task
I tried click the + at the top of the screen. This gave me a menu that says:
Create New: Maniphest Task Pholio Mock Paste
Now it says
Create New: Task Mockup Paste
(Come to think of it, I guess that Paste is kinda like Pastebin, but that's because I'm a developer.)
Also like Copy&Paste, a term most users landing in that page will be familiar with. But anyway, if you clicked that button because you wanted to create a task, "Create New: Task" is a clear choice now.
*However*, since it is so similar to email, it's all the more confusing when you get to the details. In email, the usual order of fields is....
But this is not an email interface. It is a task creation interface. If you want to create a task, "Title" is a clear concept, "CC" is probably clear as well (and if not, leaving it empty is just fine), the fact that tasks are classified into "Projects" is a familiar concept too (and if not, you can also leave it blank), and "Description" doesn't need any explanation.
you must take into account that lots of people don't bother reading field labels
and
get very confused.
Only Title and Description accept free text, so getting it wrong is actually somewhat difficult. :) I think this is quite of a low barrier for any English speaking user of MediaWiki of Wikimedia sites. Even the "English speaking" part can be improved in the future (but I'm digressing here).
== Three ==
I tried typing "MediaWiki" in projects and got an auto-completion with an umbrella icon. "Why umbrella?", I thought. And then I got it :)
Good! :)
The list of projects we have currently in fab.wmflabs.org is quite random (i.e. you were lucky to find a "MediaWiki" project, created just for testing purposes long time ago). By Day 1 we will have a full list of real projects, type-ahead should offer sensible results, and icons of projects will follow a consistent guideline.
== Four == Another thought: I searched for the attachment icon. I found it, but I am not sure that it would be easy to find for all users. I might be subjective, thought, because I upload a lot of screenshots and mileage
may
vary for other users.
Maybe you and me are getting old? ;) Note that, strictly speaking, users are not "attaching" (clip metaphore) but uploading a file that can be used anywhere and linking it to the description / comment, all at once. The tooltip says "Upload File" and you see an "up" arrow in a cloud. This is in fact a character from Awesome Font, so if you find a better alternative at https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons/ we can propose it upstream.
-- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Every new tool has its learning curve, and feedback helps to investigate making it less steep, so thanks for the feedback! :)
On Wed, 2014-08-27 at 10:54 +0300, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
== Four == Another thought: I searched for the attachment icon. I found it, but I am not sure that it would be easy to find for all users. I might be subjective, thought, because I upload a lot of screenshots and mileage may vary for other users.
Anecdotal comment: Enough users don't find the "Add an attachment" button/link in Bugzilla tickets either (and either ask how to add a screenshot, or upload to a 3rd party website and paste the link) so I'm not too afraid that things can get much worse...
andre
Hi,
On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 9:54 AM, Amir E. Aharoni < amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the "Points"
field is not there).
What if I don't have this link?
Since we had this conversation we have refactored the Phabricator homepage and its permissions. It should work a lot better for new users (registered or not), and in fact for regular users too:
Feedback welcome, here or at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T12
is there a way to simply order tasks so one can retrieve a list? top of list then gets fixed first?
rupert Am 27.08.2014 09:18 schrieb "Quim Gil" qgil@wikimedia.org:
Hi,
Users of the future Wikimedia Phabricator will have a very simple and straightforward interface to create and edit tasks. Bugzilla's UI was one of the top complaints from new/casual users, and we can fix this in Phabricator easily. Currently we are testing this setup in fab.wmflabs.org , where you can see an example:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/task/create/ (imagine that the "Points" field is not there).
Advanced users needing to prioritize tasks, assign them to someone, and resolve them can join the Triagers team in order to get the additional permissions:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/project/view/74/
We are still fine tuning this process at http://fab.wmflabs.org/T64 -- your feedback is welcome.
-- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
is there a way to simply order tasks so one can retrieve a list? top of list then gets fixed first?
There are workboards for projects, which are a bit more complex/flexible than this. See for instance the workboard of the Wikimedia Phabricator Day 1 project:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/project/board/31/
Is this what you are looking for? You can also create lists of tasks through search queries i.e. open tasks assigned to qgil sorted by priority: http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/query/j.RJXIy2lbry/#R
You can try more searches at http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/query/advanced/
PS: Amir, I'll reply to your email later today. Thank you for the quick and complete response!
Am 27.08.2014 17:02 schrieb "Quim Gil" qgil@wikimedia.org:
On Wednesday, August 27, 2014, rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com wrote:
is there a way to simply order tasks so one can retrieve a list? top of list then gets fixed first?
There are workboards for projects, which are a bit more complex/flexible than this. See for instance the workboard of the Wikimedia Phabricator Day 1 project:
http://fab.wmflabs.org/project/board/31/
Is this what you are looking for? You can also create lists of tasks through search queries i.e. open tasks assigned to qgil sorted by
priority:
yes exactly. atlassians jira e.g. is using an additional number field to allow reordering tasks via drag and drop. the task list can ne displayed then in this order in other views and searches.
You can try more searches at http://fab.wmflabs.org/maniphest/query/advanced/
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org