[Mailman-Developers] mailman 3: webinterface: prototype (PDF)

[Patrick Ben Koetter]

Terri,

thanks for taking the time to read my proposal and writing this email.

* Terri Oda <terri at zone12.com>:
>> What do you think? Should I comment the navigation structures? I've put a lot
>> of thinking into it and that is, of course, not visible. I could comment and
>> we'd have it easier to see where I think things should be put to.
>
> I love how you've put all this thought into a better structure here. But 
> no matter how much thought goes into it, someone's gonna have trouble 
> finding stuff in a tree that big...

Yes. For a list owner this seems acceptable to me. Those are the ones who are
willing to spend some time - they expect a certain level of complexity because
they know the software is complex.

For a regular subscriber the interface should be as simple as possible (but
not simplier or they will think we believe they are stupid ;).


> Can we add a search box for options?  It might not be necessary on the  
> smaller pages, but the full admin/owner interface looks like it's still  
> going to be sufficiently busy that it could help.

We can. But I, personally, would want to wait for usability test and see if we
can do without it simply because it makes the interface more complex.

Reason is, I have planned search boxes for several other use cases e.g.
finding a subscriber, a mail address etc.

I would rather not have two search boxes fanning out ambiguity and competing
for user attention - unless we need to.

I do believe complexity is a deliberate decision.

>> We will start working on design May, 1st. Minor changes to pages and elements
>> are possible. I'd like to avoid major changes after that - the effort of
>> redoing design is immense.
>
> Can we please please please do some user testing on the initial designs  
> before they get set in stone?  Ideally, I think we'd want to do this at  

Yes, very welcome.

> the point where there's a clickthrough prototype.  Then we could sit  
> some people down and ask them to do some tasks, and see how long it  

The test scenario affects the outcome of the test. We need to standardize the
test before we run it. I might be able to get some people from a usability lab
we work with help us. Let me check that.

> takes/where they go wrong.  Plus we could get general impressions on  
> usability from the mailman-users list.

We should also manage the change actively e.g. provide a little website that
explains why things have changed, where they have gone etc.

The goal would be to re-empower the people and give them the security back
they have accquired using the old interface over the years.

p at rick

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