For the second time we plan to get togheter to do a set of usability tests on Drupal 7. The previous usability tests at the University of Minesota and the University of Baltimore have revealed many critical issues we would like to fix for Drupal 7.
Whether you've spent ten years coding PHP, or used WordPress and Joomla already, everybody starting off with Drupal does so as a beginner, but no one likes to stay one. As you slowly progress to an intermediate user you become more familiar with the vocabulary and tricks that you need to build your sites. The critical issues we hope to fix we found while observing new Drupal users, though a lot of our efforts will also include intermediate users who have their Drupal site running with 20 modules and a cluttered administrative interface.
Fixing the low hanging fruit
Many important issues lay in the visual design of Garland, which make it hard for important information or call to actions to stand out in their surroundings. As we try to bring more balance to composition of all the visual elements, we'll take many of these related issues out of their current isolation in the issue queues.
Administrative panel
A lot of critical usability issues lay in the design and copywriting of the administrative panel, as we are working on renaming categories and individual functionality we will ask users what words they are looking for to complete a specific task. We would be moving more towards an hub and spoke model, which means that we will group functionality differently and allow more spokes (tabs in Garlands case) to flow from this. This will create more direction on what part of the site you are working.
Tabs
There have been several solutions offered to the problem of tabs not being noticed, most of them have involved moving them to a different place. We will test out several solutions to find out which one makes it slightly more prominent for people to notice them.
Terminology
We have a lot of text in Drupal, which tends to overwhelm a beginning user. How much of it is really being read - or more importantly actually being understood? As we move trough the interface, we will try to find out what information can be left out - to make the really important information stand out more.
These major issues will require almost all of our energies, but we will still encounter a lot of moderate to minor issues which have already been patched or are close to being patched. If you want to help out fixing the issues before the usability testing at the University of Baltimore - take a look at the usability issue queue or drop a line in #drupal-usability.
In the upcoming weeks we will post updates on all activities surrounding this initiative, so if you have any chouches free in or around Baltimore please get in contact with me.
Discussion
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