Re: [orion-dev] User Experience Call

[John J Barton <johnjbarton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, May 2, 2012 at 1:32 PM, Anton McConville <Anton.McConville@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi,

Following up from yesterday's meeting and from the great email feedback that was sent to Orion-dev, there is now UX wiki page to serve as a starting point for evolving our work flows and user experience.

http://wiki.eclipse.org/Orion/User_Experience

The emails provided real world observations on how things ( don't ) work for us right now. In the first UX meeting yesterday we also suggested that reviewing the broader use cases of Orion could help structure the overall user experience well, and left the meeting with an aim to more thoroughly understand those use cases, and to work more on identifying the work flows that matter most to them.

Some dimensions not discussed include novice vs experts, individual vs large team, existing system vs new code. However the answers here seem pretty clear: roughly the middle of each dimension.

I did not expect to see the Orion 'tribe', but this makes sense: two of Orion's strengths are a focus on plugins and dogfooding. 

I think the CMS and apps targets are a bridge too far for now.

The bottom up observations from the emails should slot into those workflows ( for example, logging in, creating a site, creating folders/files and switching/editing between css, html and js, saving, testing, publishing covers a lot of themes ). This should provide us with a catalogue of patterns/approaches that we want to get right.

In 0.5 we already started work on a few areas that we wanted to improve on. To help prioritize the next steps, please take a look at the material on the wiki - see if you agree with the themes in the mind map, or suggest more themes or other areas within them to consider. Look at the user types and their needs to see if you agree that those are the use cases we should cater to.

For the next UX meeting, I propose we focus on a theme. Prepare and turn up to the meeting with some ideas on how we'd like each area to be in an ideal world - in the context of a high level use case. As much as the feedback is valuable on what isn't working for us now, it'd be great to also have some feedback on what we'd like to see - to help get it right.

Please reply with your top three themes that you'd like to prioritize in the next UX meetings, and in our work to improve them.

The mind map diagram is very cool! And it illustrates that the Orion user experience breaks down along Orion organizational boundaries ;-) I suggest focusing some effort on workflow across boundaries. "Related Links" is a step in this direction, even though I think its too obscure and hard to reach.

Another cross-cutting issue: page repainting vs item repainting solutions. IMO item repainting solutions are essential.

The mind map does not have Orion plugin creation nor integration with other tools, two areas where Orion could have unique strength.

The Debugger and Editors themes live 180 degrees apart on the map; Zach Moreno (Orion GSOC), Jan Keromnes (Google summer intern) and I will be working to show you why they should be on the same line ;-).

jjb