Usability study results and recommendations

View Complete Report

It includes: the tasks the users had to accomplish, what they were expected to do, what they actually did, notes on what they did, and recommendations for changes to the interface.

Below is a summarized list of recommendations that came out of the studies, but please see the complete report for a full explanation of why each was suggested.

UDPATE: I have crossed out the items that were completed in order to give Manpreet a better idea of what has been done from this study and what is still to do (though I'm just going off the top of my head, so I welcome corrections).

• 1.1: Remove the line about the tour in the login page (RISA)
• 1.2: Change parts of the text in the "Welcome to Connexions!" login page (RISA)
• 1.3: List a link to the user's workspace in the "My Account" page (RISA) (now task 2268)
• 1.4: Preserve all the current links to the Workspace, as well as the ability to skip over the dropdown menu when adding a new item (RISA)
• 1.5: Either include more helpful text/links on the "Language Selection" page, or remove it altogether (RISA) (not task 2271)
• 1.6: Make the keywords box 1/2 as wide (RISA)
• 1.7: Alter the style of help texts to behave normally on mouseover (Max)
• 1.8: After the "Language Selection" page, send the user to a pre-Metadata page (it would not have tabs), and then subsequently send them to the "Edit" tab (RISA)
• 1.9: Change the "Files" page header to read "Manage Files in Module", and possibly remove the index.cnxml file from that page's listing (RISA)
• 1.10: Add text about and a link to the importer from the "Files" page (RISA) -- actually implemented by displaying the whole import/export interface on the Files tab.
• 1.11: Keep "Microsoft Word" as the top option in the importer (RISA)
• 1.12: Add title attributes to each of the tabs, to serve as tooltips (RISA) (now task 2269)
• 1.13: Explain that keywords are used for search and not display (RISA) (now task 2272)
• 2.1: Keep the "Preview" tab and remove the "Roles" tab (RISA)
• 2.2: Change the arrangement of the (pre)view links in the right-hand sidebar (RISA)
• 3.1: Add a note to the top of module when it is being previewed (Max)
• 3.2: Keep the exporter where it is, near the importer (RISA)
• 3.3: Update the content of document modules, such as m10887 and m10886, when the new interface goes live (or before) (Mark)
• 5.1: Make sure the EIP drop-down menus don't appear to be associated with any particular element (Max)
• 5.2: Change the "Add" button in the EIP drop-down menus to read "Add here" (Brian)
• 5.3: Revamp the appearance of editable elements (Max, Brian)
• 5.4: Change the text of verification notice when deleting an element. (Brian)
• 7.1: Gray-out or disable the links described in Recommendation 5.3, if implemented, when already editing an element (Brian)
• 8.1: Change the default CNXML inside the textarea when one adds a list (Brian)
• 8.2: Instead of offering users a textarea with CNXML to edit lists, provide them with elements such as textfields for each item, and buttons to add more textfields if they run out (Brian, Max)
• 8.3: Make validation errors more human-readable and/or show in the same window examples of common errors (???)
• 9.1: Remove the "Roles" tab and make users reach that page from the "Metadata" page (RISA)
• 9.2: Improve the layout of "Metadata" page to make it clearer that one reaches the role-editing area from there (RISA)
• 9.3: Add documentation about the role approval process to the page that currently has definitions of the different roles' meanings (Mark) (now task 2270)
• 9.4: Refer to "Author links" as "Module-level links" (Mark) (now task 2273)
• 9.5: Add a web form for e-mailing questions on the FAQ page (Mark or RISA) (now task 2275)
• 9.6: Let users search all of the Connexions site, not just its modules and course (RISA) (now task 2276)
• 9.7: Alter the style of buttons to make them look less like regular links (Max) (I think this fits into task 1664 (at least Jenn's 2005 comment on it))
• 9.8: Disable or gray-out the "Update Links" button before any changes have been made to its Web form (RISA)
• 9.9: Include pending contributors in module preview (but style them differently) (Max, Brent)
• 9.10: Change "roles pending approval" to "roles pending acceptance" (RISA, Mark) (this has been changed in the new interface, IIRC)
• 10.1: Add a 2nd example of a figure in the "Help" pop-up pages (Max)
• 10.2: Perhaps add a note to the "Figure Help" pop-ups regarding mimetypes, or link to a module that discusses them (Max, Mark)
• 10.3: Change "Import/Export" to read "Import/Export Modules" (RISA)
• 10.4: Disable the EIP drop-down menus while editing an element, and add link to the "Help" pop-ups near the top of the "Edit" page (Brian, RISA)
• 10.5: Force "Help" pop-up page to the front if it is called for but already open (and hiding behind the current window) (Max)
• 10.6: Prevent files in the workspace (but not module) from showing up as media in the "Edit" page (RISA)
• 11.1: Force a space into tags that were left empty or delete them altogether (Brian)
• 12.1: Add options for tagging highlighted text as inline elements from the right-click context menu, if possible (Brian???)
• 12.2: Use Adan's feature for tagging highlighted text as inline elements from a drop-down menu in the editing area (Brian)
• 13.1: Fix non-working link on the "Publish" page (bug 2007) (RISA)
• 13.2: Add more explanatory text or links on the "Links" page (RISA, Mark)
• 13.3: Include EIP drop-down menus wherever they would be appropriate (Brian)
• 14.1: Change the example in the "Definition Help" pop-up page to be more concise (Max)
• 14.2: Add "Definition" to the list of elements that can be added from the EIP drop-down menus (Brian)
• 14.3: As in Recommendation 8.2, replace the CNXML textarea with textfields for term, meanings, and examples (Brian, Max)
• 14.4: Again, make the validity error messages more human-readable (???)
• 16.1: Make a note in the the "Help" pop-ups that IDs cannot begin with numbers (Max)
• 16.2: Change the style of the opening and closing tags in the editing area to be more like the text in the textbox, and lighten the contrast between editable and non-editable areas (Max)
• A.1: Preserve the new "Help" pop-up pages (Max, Brian)
• A.2: Fine-tune our documentation pages (Mark)
• A.3: Add a "Friends" or "Associates" area to the "My Account" and "Roles" page (RISA)
• A.4: Add a Web form to the bottom of the "Help" page so that people can contact us as an alternative to e-mail (and perhaps anonymously) (Mark or RISA)
• A.5: Allow sections, tables, definitions, rules, and block quotes to be added from the EIP drop-down menus (Brian)
• A.6: Change the "Switch to Editing Full Source" and "Switch to Edit-in-Place" links to appear as tabs (RISA, Max)