Design update on User Interface Options

[James W. Yoon]

Hello,

An update on the work the design team's been doing in UI Options:

I. User testing

A few months ago, we completed a round of user testing on the demo implementation of UI Options (Infusion 1.4). While testing revealed some areas that could be tightened up, users found the experience generally useful and usable.

Relevant links:
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/%28Floe%29+UI+Options+user+testing+results+%28March+2012%29
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/%28Floe%29+UI+Options+user+testing+report+%28April+2012%29

We had a few of concerns though:

1. It's challenging to design a testing protocol that teases out how users might want the system to adapt to them. Many experienced users are already attuned to adapting to the system, while less experienced users are unfamiliar with the space of adaptations possible. (Or as Jobs might say: "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.")

2. The current fat panel UIO has a couple of key flaws that this round of testing didn't directly reveal: a) lack of responsive design (this problem is particularly exacerbated when UIO size-related preferences are recursively applied back to itself), and, on a related note, b) lack of expandability.

3. The current UIO is designed around a myopic scenario of a user visiting a website, and adjusting its presentation and operation to match his/her preferences. In this scenario, preferences are scoped tightly to the site and browser session. Consequently, the current designs have limited consideration for more realistic use cases (e.g., visiting a string of websites/webapps as part of a larger workflow or browsing session; or multi-day use over multiple machines or machines that are shared).

II. User research, literature review, brainstorming

To address concerns around #1, we conducted a literature review and a round of user research. This was followed by sessions of brainstorming for ideas around both the space of useful preferences, and the operationalization of those preferences.

Relevant links:
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/%28Floe%29+UI+Options+brainstorming+resources
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UI+Options+configurations+and+interactions
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UI+Options+features+and+functionality+list

III. New design iteration

Along with a number of added preferences (see "Priority features and functionality" at http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/UI+Options+features+and+functionality+list), we are also working on addressing concerns #2 and #3 by reworking the UIO configurations. Fat panel is getting attention to be responsive and address expandability, and full page will receive a more substantial reworking to make sense in a site-independent implementation (e.g., GPII/Cloud4All's user selected parameters and profile management).

We're also working on another design for users to declare and manage preferences, based around smart, predictive searching of preferences/needs/problems/topics. This may become integrated with the two other configurations, or act as an independent configuration option.

Relevant links:
http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/User+Interface+Options+designs%2C+C.1
https://source.fluidproject.org/svn/design/floe/user-interface-options/

We've found that designing UIO has been an exciting experience. It's an odd monkey with particular tensions between 1) simplicity (ease of identifying, articulating, and managing preferences for users who may find their web experience already challenging) and complexity (sufficient range and nuance of preferences to cater to the diversity of users, particularly at the margins), and 2) a user's need or preference (authorship control over the presentation and operation) and design integrity (e.g., how one maintains the intent, character, and virtue of the design).

As always, we're open to thoughts, questions, suggestions, and criticisms of our designs.

Cheers,
James
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