launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Martin Pilkington <pilky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martin,

On 14 Dec 2009, at 8:07 pm, Martin Albisetti wrote:
> Hi Martin, thanks for sending this in, it's great to see people
> propose solutions to UI problems.
> I've been Launchpad's UI guy for a bit over a year, so at this stage
> I'm to blame for most of the problems.

Honestly, I think you've done quite a good job improving Launchpad over the past year, it was much worse.

> We have yet to break down each page into this detail of target
> audience, but we have developed a few Personas:
> https://dev.launchpad.net/Personas

Thanks, that will be very useful.


> So, the reason why we dropped that top bar after 4 years, is because
> we wanted to bring projects to the foreground. The fact that you are
> in Launchpad is secondary, and we wanted the design to reflect that.
> It has created some confusion to the people that span cross multiple
> projects, although there is a change in the navigation that may
> address this to a certain level by letting you jump between projects
> from the breadcrumbs.
> We also chose to start dropping the coloring scheme for each
> application, as most users we tested on didn't really understand the
> difference.

Ah, that's fair enough. I felt it helped border the site, but I can see where you're coming from.

> The homepage was something we left for last, and did not really excel
> at it. We're in the process of finishing up some re-branding
> discussions internally, and the home page will be the first thing we
> tackle.
> That said, I think this design is much cleaner than the current one
> and I'd support such a change. If you're interested in getting your
> hands dirty with Launchpad's code, I'd be happy to help you out.
> Note that the home page has different content depending of whether
> you're logged in or not.

I'd definitely be interested in doing some work on the Launchpad code at some point to help out with some of this stuff.

> In our first roll-out we had a line that separated them as well, but
> the page felt even more cluttered so we dropped it.

Yeah, the line is more there to make it seem like the section links aren't floating. I feel the links and branding get in each others way on the current layout.

> The get involved boxes where actually placed on one of the most
> prominent places on the page. The bazaar page is a pretty extreme
> example in the sense that it has so many files for download and really
> pushed down that content. The problem is really limiting the number of
> files to something sane and usable.
> In one of the iterations I placed those links in the exact same place,
> but since descriptions vary a lot in size I ended up placing it in a
> more consistent place where you could learn to go to when jumping
> around prokects.

Yeah, I see that point. I might move it back to the sidebar.

> That is because it hasn't been rolled out to more places  ;)
> The primary action on that page is to download the software, that's
> why it's so prominent. The implementation for multiple files I agree,
> it's not great. Originally, we wanted to detect your OS and offer
> accordingly. That feature dropped off the radar but I still miss it.

I feel that you can make something prominent by using positioning rather than making it quite different visually. OS detection would probably help a lot in the multiple file case.

> The reason why breadcrumbs are where they are, is because they are
> related to the title.
> We've had a few different iterations on this and the current situation
> seemed to balance out best in all pages. I'll try and dig up some of
> the wireframes.

Right, I just felt that the information about who reported it was more useful being under the title. I did only do this small subsection of pages.


> So we used to have an "actions portlet" in previous versions of
> Launchpad, and like you can see in your design, it just became a
> christmas tree of options.
> The rule we decided to follow was: if it can be done inline, the
> action should be where the content is.

I see your point. I think the issue is that the actions blend in to the content too much at the moment. If they were more distinct visually then it would be easier.

> Moving the "bugtask table" below the description has been talked about
> many many times.
> The problem with doing so is that for first time visits to bugs, it
> makes sense, but subsequent visits, where you change statuses, assign
> people, etc, it doesn't. It complicates finding the information and
> interacting with it. Having it on top seemed like a fair trade off for
> people using the application heavily and one-time users.

This could work if the description was given the same visual separation. At the moment it seems to be in a mush of text underneath the table.

> Please continue to be encouraged to send in such detailed emails.
> Slightly related, you may be interested in a mailing list about
> usability in open source: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ayatana

Well this first set of mockups was simply to show some simple ideas for improving readability. I'm wanting to go over the same pages and do a drastic redesign and start completely from scratch, which would probably take a LOT more work to implement than many of the changes in these current mockups (which would largely consist of editing CSS). I'll definitely take a look at that mailing list

Thanks

Martin