On Sep 15, 2005, at 1:28 PM, Dries Buytaert wrote:

 - Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.  For many people, this is either due to (i) the terminology or (ii) the awkward navigation structure.  Many people feel lost and don't know where to start.  As such, some people think of Drupal as "too complex" or "different than other systems".  In the next few weeks, I want you to investigate how we can continue to improve the Drupal exerpience.


Hi, I have spent the last 13 days neck deep in hurricane relief work and I am just starting to come out of it.

Here's brief update of what's happened and what needs to be done still.
1) Creation of the control panel module that give a whole page to navigate Drupal administration.   We are building icons and card sort will help with administration grouping.  Expect prototypes in the near future.
2) Remote usability testing: We have developed and prototyped a remote usability environment.  We successfully video and audio captured users reviewing wireframes of Drupal site.   We will be doing more of this in the near future.  we will be publishing videos via RSS for the community to see the usability problems.
3) Project module is key in providing an evaluation of modules that is a very important component of site administration for site developers.  
4) Administration help has been submitted as a patch.  We need to review and ensure users have access to help from admin pages for all modules.
5) We created the Wireframe module which allows users to build wireframes from interface components.  We hope by providing wireframe support within Drupal that the connection between designers, programmers, and users can be tighter.  To understand wireframes: http://www.iawiki.net/WireFrames
6) I have completed about a dozen interviews for Drupal administration user experience.  I have to conduct more interview with novice users as all the interviewees were heavy users of Drupal Administration.   Those interviews will lead to a broad survey for the community.  From the survey we will prioritize the top user experience problems in Drupal and then dedicate resources to improve it.

Sorry for the delays, but the improvements will get into Drupal 4.7.

Cheers,
Kieran
Development Manager 
CivicSpace Labs