1. User Experience What Ive learned over the past couple of years.

2. What Have I Done?

Views

Panels

Nodequeue

Advanced Help

User Titles

Delicious

Node access Arbitrator

Paging

DHTML Menu

Taxonomy Redirect

Taxonomy Lineage

Forum Access

ACL

LiveJournal Crossposter

Dashboard

Masquerade

Update Status

D6 Theme System

3. Makes Kittens Cry 4. Just Makes Me Cry 5. Developers bad at UI?

Sorry, I dont buy it.

Modular systems have trouble with Big Picture.

Lack of time.

Good UI is a lot of work.

Tools not there / available.

Browsers have limited, rigid capabilities.

Sometimes UI just isnt the priority.

Developers tend to be focused on functionality.

Developers often only focus on a single user target.

6. Who is the actor?

Site Builder

• First time site builder

• Experienced site builder

Site Administrator

Site User

7. Site Builder

CCK, Views, Panels, Block, Menu, Theming

First experience with Drupal

Less important once a site is up and running

Knowledge level varied

• The more accessible Drupal gets, the less knowledge the average site builder has.

8. Site Administrator

Content organization, User Management, Complex content creation

Very important for long term sites!

Administrators are much less knowledgable than Builders

Very important tofindcontent

Very important tosummarizeactivity

9. Site User

Content consumption, simple content creation, such as forums, blog posts, etc.

Generally more focused onconsuminginformation thancreatingit.

This is more the focus of the overall site design, layout and navigation tree.

10. Focus

Currently, we focus on thesite builder , and let the builder focus on thesite user.

Does thesite administratorget shafted here?

Focus on thenew site buildercan steal functionality from theexperienced site builder.

Conversely, focus on theexperienced site buildercan confuse thenew site builder.

11. Process of Using a UI

See it

Experiment with it

Do something with it

12. Seeing is Understanding

Organization Matters!!!

The most important pieces of the UI should draw the eye

Logical progression to next most important piece

Grouping similar or related items helps build a memory map

Build on associations

13. Learned from a Remote Control 14. Information Accessibility

Windows method

• Hide everything

Unix method

• Optimize for speed

• Difficult to learn

Expert mode

• This is a sign of failure, up front

Not too much

Not too little

Easily find more Dont hide, prioritize

Provide feedback after operations

15. Use Existing Assumptions

Links to Administer a Thing near a Thing

Train the user. Let the user know this.

Use digestible bites control the stream of information.

Show the important stuff up front. Create paths to related information.

There does not have to be just one way to get somewhere!

If you re-use a pattern, users will learn this and your life becomes easier.

16. Pitfalls to Avoid

Put everything on just one form. Yes this is hard to avoid.

Forms that dont show their results. Preview!!!

Browsers are weak with unsaved form data; dont make the user leave the page unless youre prepared.

17. Conclusion

Know who the actors are and cater to them.

Understand how people see an interface and design visually.

Strive to keep the information accessible.

Take advantage of existing assumptions.