[drupal-devel] A collection of usability problems

[neil at civicspacelabs.org]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2005 at 07:45:42PM +0200, ?lvaro Ortiz wrote:
> Here's a sketch:
> 
> http://furilo.com/drupal/DRU-HCI-admin-content-01-out.png
> 
> (a continiustic approach, as I mean not to propose big changes)
> 
> Comments:
> 
> * Quick stats (or call it whatever you like, its a quick sketch, haven't 
> entered into much detaill): the total number of nodes and comments (I 
> know comments don't belong here, but a shorcut well thought its not 
> bad), the # of nodes/comments needing action, and some insight as what 
> happenned in your site recently (this could make it into the new admin 
> control panel?)

I like this idea. You say this is a quick sketch, I'd like to see a more
finished version.

> * Content by type: so you get an idea of what your site is composed of, 
> and shortcut to filter any content type.
> 
> Another debate would be separating "page" content type, or letting an 
> admin change the name of a content type...

Making story and page part of a system with user-defineable content types
would be nice. But that is a different discussion.

> * Content by status: not sure of this one, as many of the indicators are 
> not of frequent use, but good to know at first glance that you have 
> content waiting moderation (but it's repeated)

Yep, I don't find much use in these. I'd be interested to know if anyone
has interesting uses of these.

> * Filter: I find the actual filter widget difficult to use, which I 
> think ends up in reducing its use. I find the radio buttons irrelevant; 
> you can go without them as it can be seen with the same functionality 
> and reducing the number of clicks.

I like this, but it seems redundant with the Content by type and status
sections. I think the Filter section may be removed.

To get the multiple-filtering functionality out of the Content by type
and status sections we could add a link beside 'view' which narrows down
what is currently shown.

An example of this is the 'related tags' column of
http://del.icio.us/drumm/drupal. I don't think '+' is the best link to
use for narrowing down since it hard to click.

> * Table of results: I would add a date column.

This table is quite wide. Maybe type or status could be represented with
color?

-Neil