Just before Twin Cities DrupalCamp 2015, a group of Drupal contributors participated both in-person (@Bojhan, @webchick, @eliza411, @stpaultim, @ivanstegic, @lunk_rat, and others) and remotely in Formal usability testing of Drupal 8 at the University of Minnesota Usability Lab.
Seven participants tested Drupal 8, all with a background in web development, some with prior Drupal experience and some without, but all new to Drupal 8. A set of scenarios were prepared that lead participants through a variety of content authoring and site building tasks:
- Add an about page and add it to the main navigation
- Create a content type with fields
- Test the mobile content authoring/editing experience
- Place a pre-configured block in the left sidebar (or create one in Views).
(We also tried to test Quick Edit, but sadly no one found it! Sniff!)
This issue will attempt to collate the 100+ issues we found during testing, categorized, and prioritized according to their overall usability impact. (Note that Usability priorities do not always reflect the Drupal core definitions of issue priority and therefore may actually be classified as different priorities in the issue tracker.)
Each of these needs to be "issue-ified" and tagged both "UMN 2015" and "Usability." We will attempt to do this at the sprint on Sunday.
Mental model
Blocks
| Description | Issue | UX priority |
|---|
| The idea that there was an existing library of blocks was completely lost to the user. | #2512456: [Regression] Users were unable to figure out how to place a block | critical |
| Users wanted to add blocks from regions, both on the front-end, and from the back-end block admin form. | | major |
| When placing a block, users expected to be able to add a block through the add block button and then fill in the body, including dynamic blocks. | | major |
| Order of block placement/configuration form is not intuitive. Cache settings is too prominent. Region (primary action) is at the bottom. | #2361921: Re-order the 'place/configure block' form so it's focused on the task at hand. | major |
| Regions were understood as blocks; for example, "Primary menu" being interpreted as the primary menu, not as a region in which you can place a menu. | | major |
| Disabled as a region makes no sense. It is an action you take on the block, not a place to put it. | | normal |
| The demo link was completely missed. If that had been used, the user would have a completely different experience with previews. | | normal |
| User went to appearance looking for blocks. "I'm looking for layout." | | normal |
Content creation
| Description | Issue | UX priority |
|---|
| Finding where to get started creating a basic page was difficult. | | critical |
| "I would like to see what this would look like if I'm not logged in." The status of what was being displayed, that of an unpublished preview, was not clear. | | major |
| Save button was expected on the right sidebar, like it is with Wordpress. | | normal |
| Description | Issue | UX priority |
|---|
| Weight was confusing. What do I put here to get what I want? Help text didn't explain weight. "Well… I'll put 1 here then." | | normal |
| Description | Issue | UX priority |
|---|
| When trying to add a term that does not exist, Drupal returned an error: "Asian Carp entity does not exist." If the site went live this way, it would have been more severe. | | normal |
Configuration management
| Description | Issue | UX priority |
|---|
| "Configuration Management" sounds more important and appealing than it really is. User went there hoping for more. | | normal |
More to come... :P