User Experience Task Team

STATUS UPDATE: The team is currently working on the wireframes for a new release skin (for details see the list of projects below). We agreed on the general concept of topic interaction. Right now we are in the process of designing and discussing the actual look and feel of screens (eg. view, edit, attach, history, new). My assumption is that we are going to have an agreement on the general look and feel of the most important screens (view and edit) by the end of this year. Maybe earlier

-- CarloSchulz - 10 Dec 2009

UX Mission

This Team sets and develops User Experience direction for both the releases of Foswiki, its Website and its sub server. It builds the foundation on which our devs can code the most powerful and easiest to use Wiki and web application platform on the planet!

It can delegate Experience related work to the WebsiteFacilitatorTaskTeam, who work to keep the system running, and to developers.

UX Vision

Create the web collaboration platform with the most pleasant user experience!

Minimize the learning curve for newcomers and help more experienced users to release the platform's full potential.

UX Goals

• establish a development framework (wireframes and storyboards as drivers for architecture and design)
• help people get up to speed regarding UE concepts
• establish UserExperienceGuidelines
• establish a development framework (wireframes and storyboards as drivers for architecture and design)
• help people get up to speed regarding UE concepts

The Team

none,

Wanna join? Add yourself to the participants list and tells us what you are interested in? What would you like to contribute to strengthen Foswiki user experience.

Name	UX skills	What I'd like to improve	What I'm currently working on
CarloSchulz	Usability Engineering, Interaction Design, CSS and Visual Design to a certain degree	The general look and feel, the way one interact with a topic, removing the implementation centricity from the UI and shift towards a user centered interface	RethinkingTopicInteraction, RethinkingTopicInteractionPrototype
PaulHarvey		Workflow: Editing, Navigation	WysiwygTaskTeam
MartinSeibert	Usability Engineering, Experience from expert usability analysis and professional user tests in the company, I am working.	The general surface, interface of main actions, reduce clutter, kill not necessary options	I want to blog about initiatives, that I saw from Carlo and Arthur. They look great.
ArthurClemens	UX Strategy, Interaction Design, Prototyping, Frontend programming	User flow, workflow, so basically all current templates and their connections	RethinkingTopicInteraction, RethinkingTopicInteractionPrototype
MichaelDaum	webdesign, web-developer, practical usability experience, information achitecture	further tasty design & usability; I'd like to see a theming community for Foswiki	UX related extensions: JQueryPlugin, NatSkin, NatEditPlugin, UploadPlugin, ImagePlugin, ImageGalleryPlugin

UX Projects

Active projects:

Design Studys for the new release skin:

• Subject: skin
• Status: worked on
• Status note: just released a new design based on WireframesViewSkin
• Driver: CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: interaction design, visual design

HTML prototype for new skin:

• Subject: skin
• Status: worked on
• Status note: first release of HTML prototype
• Driver:
• Skills needed: interaction design, visual design, frontend programming

Wording Definitions of Menu Items used for Topic Interaction:

• Subject: skin
• Status: worked on
• Status note:
• Driver: CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: copy

RethinkingTopicInteraction : Rethinking topic interaction: the way topic interaction is organized just raises the bar for new users, and does not help in getting them to intermediate users

• Subject: core interface
• Status: under heavy discussion
• Status note:
• Driver: ArthurClemens, CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: analysis, interaction design, visual design

Rethought Topic Interactions - Prototype: Prototype for ideas developed in RethinkingTopicInteraction

• Subject: core interface
• Status: worked on
• Status note:
• Driver: CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: interaction design, visual design

Analyzing the status quo: We need to change the out of the box experience

• Subject: core interface
• Status: needs breaking down in sub projects
• Status note: We can distill useful ideas from the long list
• Driver: help wanted
• Skills needed: strategy, analysis

Organize foswiki.org: Structure the website according to user needs

• Subject: website
• Status: worked on
• Status note: New design presented in HomepageRedesignTalks; new pages added to About web (more needed)
• Driver: ArthurClemens, help wanted
• Skills needed: analysis, interaction design, visual design, copy

Wireframes for the Edit screen: Wireframes for edit screen of new release skin

• Subject: skin
• Status: worked on
• Status note: brainstorming
• Driver: CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: interaction design, visual design, frontend programming, perl programming

Wireframs for the history screen:

• Subject: skin
• Status: brainstorm
• Status note: kick off
• Driver: CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: analysis, interaction design

Wireframes view screen: Wireframes for view screen of new release skin

• Subject: skin
• Status: worked on
• Status note: second round of drafts
• Driver: CarloSchulz
• Skills needed: analysis

• See UserExperienceTaskTeamProjects - a hub for all sub projects (ongoing, past and future projects. There will be proposals and tasks as a result from these sub projects.

Topics that may become a seperate UX Project:

• "More options" screen (also called "More actions" in NatSkin)
  • NewLayoutForMoreScreen
• Provide a notification mechanism to give feedback on user actions
  • RelayAlertsToTopicTop

Resources and starting points

See UserExperienceHub for further information regarding usability and user experience.

Some good reads on usability and open source:

• Designing Web Applications for Use
• Why Free Software has poor usability, and how to improve it
• Ten Ways to Make More Humane Open Source Software
• The Rise of Interface Elegance in Open Source Software

• KDE Usability Project - Good input for organizing our own efforts.

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Discussion

Carlo, could we have a status update, please?

-- CrawfordCurrie - 09 Dec 2009

I'm not sure where to put this, it doesn't quite deserve a task or a feature proposal.

But the purpose/function/documenation of WEBBGCOLOR should be reviewed. I myself fumbled at understanding what it did when I became a Foswiki/tmwiki dude.

This thought is prompted by an irc question here and here.

-- PaulHarvey - 30 Dec 2009