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 | Some notes from our usability session - feel free to move inline with relevant section |
Discussed various usability issues around admin menu, event wizard, mail wizard.
Problems with Wizard are they are hard to navigate. Discussed replacing wizards with tabs, especially for Event where wizard concept doesn't seem to make sense that much.
Admin menu
Discussed problem around admin menu interacting with civi menu - overlap, etc.
Possible solutions and improvemens:
- stack civi menu underneath drupal menu
- show/hide toggle between both menus
- Style menu differently, specifically choose different color
Event wizard
Discussed ways to improve event wizard.
Ordering not necessary to produce an event therefore is wizard concept suitable? Better to be able to dive in at any point (as is possible once event has been created).
Event wizard makes people think that they won't have made an event unless they get right to the end.
Alternative is to order information using tabs like the new revised contact screen. CiviEvent tabs could follow similar flow to new contact screen
Problems here around users not realising that they have to save changes after they have closed a tab.
Check boxes at the beginning of the event creation process can guide you to the correct screen. e.g. I want to charge for this event brings up the tab that has event prices. Discussion over whether this was overkill - if you are using tabs, why also use checkboxes at the beginning? [michael - possible hybrid - use tabs but have descriptive help text at the beginning.
<chrisivens (feel free to edit)> - Please bear in mind that not all users are web savvy. What is needed, and I quote from the brainstorming (xavier?) that there should be one and preferably only one obvious way of doing it. While a wizard has a step-by-step nature that is helpful to make sure that pages are visited (and only today a client mentioned that it was straight forward using the wizard without realising) they may not be the best way. Obviously there's no 'one-click' solution so observing the way a user works with the system can help to identify weaknesses.
Certainly some of this should be included in the v3.0 brainstorm as I believe it to be a key ingredient to the success of a project. I have started to note down my observations from my current project which will be filled over the coming days (please give me time to sort this). See http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Observations+on+a+live+project for a bit more.
My main observation is that clutter can and should be reduced. Make things simple. One of the successes of twitter is the simplicity and I know civicrm is very different but the principle is the same.
</chrisivens>
Different event types could have different default event fields filled in.
Suitable defaults could be set for event fields at a global level
Master events
Here's a proposal for making event creation easier.
Current ability to copy events a good way to solve a lot of the hassle of creating events. But problems with this model include that people forget to change important data - like the price, dates, etc.
Master events are essentially reserved events that have most fields filled in but prompt you to fill in those that aren't.
A new workflow based on this idea would be
1) choose event template or blank event
2) fill in missing data
Master events will help with configurability
Would also be good to cater for orgs that organise multiple events - i.e. can create more than one at a time based on a master event or copied event.
Some orgs are using CCK with Drupal to create event pages that have a certain look, e.g. picture. Problem here is potential for "double entry" of information. Would be good to have a link to the edit page of CCK node to help style this from the Event admin page.
Other issues briefly discussed
Cut down on amount of steps needed to administer custom data/ profiles - partially solved b
Editing advanced search screen to e.g. remove state field
ability to set defaults for fields (e.g. completed/scheduled)
