A few usability suggestions

[Jon Stahl]

Duane, Petri (et al)-

 

I've got the eCtool 0.2 alpha up and running.  You can check out my testbed at http://cms.onenw.org:8080/ecampaigning if you like.

 

I've gotten a simple campaign up and running to test.

 

I've noticed a couple of usability issues that would prevent me from deploying it in production, but that I I think will be easy to fix.

1. The default views for both the campaign (http://cms.onenw.org:8080/ecampaigning/climate-change-petition) and the ActionEdition (http://cms.onenw.org:8080/ecampaigning/climate-change-petition/sign-the-bc-climate-change-petition) seem inappropriate for public consumption. 
   
   I would expect to see the takeaction view (http://cms.onenw.org:8080/ecampaigning/climate-change-petition/sign-the-bc-climate-change-petition/takeaction) as the default for the latter in all circumstances.  For the campaign itself, what i'd want to see as the default view might depend on whether the campaign has multiple ActionEditions or not.  For a single-ActionEdition campaign, the takeaction view should be there.   
   For a multi-ActionEdition campaign, some sort of custom summary view might be needed -- not quite sure exactly what, but I suppose it would have to accomplish the goal of helping steer the user towards the appropriate ActionEdition.  Since multi-Edition campaigns are almost by definition a complex use-case, I would suggest that for now we set ActionEdition as a valid type for selecting as a default view, and let the user choose one if they want to via the Display menu.   Duane, any thoughts on this?
   
2. The various sub-components of the ActionEdition appear in the navigation.  That's Too Much Information(tm), I think.  I'd suggest that all of the custom content types except for the CampaignAction and ActionEdition be banished from navigation by default.
   
3. In order to make it easier for users to get started creating campaigns, I think that all the eCTool content types should NOT be implicitly addable, except inside a CampaignAction folder (except of course for CampaignAction). 
   
4. It would be really nice if creating a CampaignAction automatically instantiated placeholders for each of the basic subitems -- this would make getting started a LOT quicker and less confusing.

I would be happy to implement the default view for ActionEdition part of item #1, and items 2 & 3 in a branch (or against trunk) if that's helpful.   #4 might require a bit more skill than I have. 

 

best,

jon

 

 

-----------------------------

Jon Stahl, Program Manager

ONE/Northwest - Online Networking for the Environment

j...@onenw.org  http://www.onenw.org
206.286.1235x15  skype: jonstahl  y!: jondstahl

 

Want a piece of my mind? Check out my blog at:

http://blogs.onenw.org/jon

 

[Duane Raymond]

Hi Jon,

 

These are excellent points - and ones I have encountered myself - so they'll be added to the issue tracker for being dealt with - hopefully by Beta stage.

 

As you were an early tester there is one thing you could do now. You seem to have your 'Campaign Action' containing your 'Action Edition'.  This isn't required and in fact having a 'Campaign Action' is not required now (still under debate) - so simply move your Action Edition to the location you want it (you can sell group it under a Campaign Action added elsewhere on the site)

 

As for updating the SVN with /takeaction as the default action - I wish it was this easy.  You can do this for your purposes now - but you will find you lose the ability to clock on the edition and edit it and will need to manually go to /base_edit on your Action Edition to edit it.  We'll need to find a solution that makes the action page the default view while preserving the ability to click on an edit tab for the edition.

Hopefully that helps you now.  We drew the line somewhere to get the eCampaigning Tool released but knew there were usability issues with it and want to work with you and others to resolve these.

 

Cheers,

 

Duane

 

PS - I'll be adding a bunch of issues to the issue tracker in a few days as they are currently in an internal Trac system) - and the issues you raise will be among them.

[Jon Stahl]

Duane-

As you were an early tester there is one thing you could do now. You seem to have your 'Campaign Action' containing your 'Action Edition'.  This isn't required and in fact having a 'Campaign Action' is not required now (still under debate) - so simply move your Action Edition to the location you want it (you can sell group it under a Campaign Action added elsewhere on the site) 

 

Ah!  That would be fine.  I hadn't figured that out.  Thanks. 

 

As for updating the SVN with /takeaction as the default action - I wish it was this easy.  You can do this for your purposes now - but you will find you lose the ability to clock on the edition and edit it and will need to manually go to /base_edit on your Action Edition to edit it.  We'll need to find a solution that makes the action page the default view while preserving the ability to click on an edit tab for the edition.

 

Yeah, I talked about this with our developers.  Archetypes can't choose a view conditionally, as you likely know, but what can be done is to make the takeaction view template iteself display different things depending on the user's permissions.

 

best,

jon

-----------------

[Petri Savolainen]

On Feb 5, 10:56 pm, "Jon Stahl" <j...@onenw.org> wrote:
> I would be happy to implement the default view for ActionEdition part of
> item #1, and items 2 & 3 in a branch (or against trunk) if that's
> helpful. #4 might require a bit more skill than I have.

Hi Jon, that would be great- the more hands the faster the tool
improves. Feel free to make the changes to the 0.2.0 branch - we'll
cut at least one more release out of it.

Regards,

Petri