tastes like candy

Well, here I am again!

Coding time is coming and I’m very excited about it. I’ve learned a lot this month and things are coming out great for me – I’m really liking the community, people are very, very nice, and also I have a very cool and responsible mentor

But today it’s about mockups!

In my tentative timeline I said I was going to do some mockups drawing and deliver it to the community approval, so we could built together the actual, real and beautiful mockup. So it’s time, right on time!

First of all, we came out with a list of functionalities the widgets explorer will have:

• List applets
• Filter by category
• Filter by most used (support of usage statistics)
• Drag and drop to add widget
• Support of emblems
• List kde-look widgets, download source widgets
• Install kde-look widgets
• Install from directory

These are the required functionalities. Of course desirable funcs can appear and be a part of it (some already appears in mockups). The great thing is that we were able to remove functionalities that weren’t used very much and then a more simple UI could be built.

I managed to draw 2 ideias to the widget explorer, where I tried to put all the functionalities, UI, usability concepts we extracted from focus group, and also others I studied. Some of these concepts were: no scrolling bar – instead we use navigation buttons to reveal pages; more information about widgets when navigating; categories always on, not hidden in combobox.

These are the drawings:

I talked to pinheiro (great kde designer) about the mocks, and he really enjoyed it, particulary the second one. He said we could go for it, but first we have to ask for the community approval. Once is decided, pinheiro said he could do the actual, real, beautiful mockup, like no one can do

When drawing the mocks, I represented the widgets as a little ball, as you can see. That would represent the widgets icons, actually. This icon issue was largely discussed at focus group, cause there is too many icons to be made, and too few designers to accomplish that. The truth be told: these icons are too cute to be discarted. So I thought: what if these icons were all little translucid plasma-like balls, with some content inside? I think the work of doing icons would be much easier and more people would be capable of doing it, since the content would be much simpler… I don’t know. It was just an ideia… Pinheiro agreed with me, though! “I can already imagine how it would like with little balls ” 

cute

well, I’m looking forward to hear your feedback!

Hey, you all. It’s been a week since our focus group session happened and I spend this week doing some analysis over it. I gotta tell you – it was a very productive meeting, with some very good ideas and discussions that should lead us to very good results! For the ones who asked, mockups are coming soon (don’t worry – designers will help me with that , but not now. I’m trying to follow my timeline strictly

Before I start talking about the results, I’d like to thanks to all of the 12 people who participated of the session:

MoRpHeUz, jeez__, guiocavalcanti, pinheiro, notmart, ivan_cukic, aseigo, cmarcelo, anselmosm, pinda, annieC, seele

Thanks for helping this matter!

Well, first of all, me and pinda had a script to follow during the session, with topics to guide us. Since those topics eventually changed courses along with the meeting, I’m going to write down the actual topics found in the discussion:

1. How often do you use the widgets explorer?
2. Do you find it useful? Why?
3. What do you feel about it?
4. Which functionalities do you use?
5. When you’re searching for widgets, what do you do?
6. What do you feel about this search mechanism and the way the widgets are listed?
7. Which functionalities bothers you?
8. What usability problems do you feel about the current widget explorer?
9. And what about functionalities issues?
10. There are a lot of ways remote widgets can possibly be displayed in the add new widgets dialog. What way do you think is most comfortable to use?
11. I understand this question concerns a feature that doesn’t exist yet, but just try imagine having that possibility. Where would you expect them to be? Like in a seperate tab/category? mixed with other widgets with a different emblem? structured by computer that shares them?
12. But what do you think? Consider each other machines like a seperate categories? Have one category
    ‘plasmoids near you’? Have a tree-view like thingy that structures widgets under the computer that shares them?
13. Terminology for this widgets-over-network feature: what do you think a good name
    would be for accessing a widget this way?
14. Take a look at these mockups and talk about it:
    http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Plasma+-+Add+Widgets+Mockup?content=101423
    http://blusrcu.ba/nookie/?p=22

The topics 10 to 13 where pinda’s topics. We made analysis of those to, but pinda is the one who’s gonna explain that to you.

Below are 2 mindmaps of the focusgroup results. I put it in short topics for a quick understanding of the session (for those with no courage to read everything )

This one sums up the discussion about the current widgets explorer and mockups

This one were the ideas that appeared when discussing the current widgets explorer and mockups

Ok, so I’m going to analyze topic by topic.

1 – How often do you use the widgets explorer?

2 – Do you find it useful? Why?

That would be pretty obvious to say that the widgets explorer is used only when there’s the need to add widgets. It became clear, thought, that’s not an everyday/very often used tool – but it’s still very important and useful. The main point is that the tool is used in a low frequency and for supposed quick tasks.

3 – What do you feel about it?

As known, the current widgets explorer doesn’t satisfy much – seems that it doesn’t answer to it’s purpose. Incredibly, even being a not-very-often-used tool, it can bothers users pretty much – everyone at the focus group session.  So much it makes one wanna kill it.

<@annieC> and what do you feel about it?

<+pinheiro> the usuall “kill, kill, die, die

Widgets explorer seems to be poor to the users – it has a lack of plasmoids info [jeez__], no organization and very annoying ugliness [pinheiro]. A bit flat list doesn’t please anymore [notmart].

4 – Which functionalities do you use?

This topic was about raising the most used functionalities of the tool and keeping in mind that those should be treated more carefully.

The first functionality remembered at the session was the drag and drop. The “add widget” functionality is discarded with the possibility of dragging and dropping the plasmoid. [notmart] exposes that he uses drag and drop specially because it puts the widget exactly where he wants. [jeez__] said, though, that he took sometime to realize he could dnd the plasmoid – an usability issue observed that maybe can tell us something.

There was a conflict about the “favorites” functionality. Some says it doesn’t make much sense, others don’t use it much, others don’t use it at all. [pinheiro_] brought a strong opinion when said that he tend to prefer “most used” categories rather than favorites, since the “most used” list is made automatically.

5 – When you’re searching for widgets, what do you do?

With this topic, things can get a little confused. [ivan_cukic] said that he searched by “favorites” – functionality barely used be others – “most used” and by typing the name. He said he doesn’t really uses categories.
It became clear that most of them uses the search field, either to search for functionality or to search by name.
The categories are ignored by most of them – some said because it’s hidden under a combo box. [cmarcelo] thinks, though, that the use of categories could be nice to discover new widgets, even though he doesn’t use this search mechanism.

6 – What do you feel about this search mechanism and the way the widgets are listed?
7 – Which functionalities bothers you?

There were a few issues that can be listed under this 2 topics:
- search field doesn’t work well – seems that the search for widgets by typing the desired functionality doesn’t work. Since it doesn’t work, people try to guess the widgets names and type it.
- The categories options are hidden
- The category of a widget isn’t always the right one – the “most used” category, though, is used and seems to please everyone
- There isn’t much information about a listed widget

Within this topic, when discussing about the “categories” issue, the concept of tagging widgets came up. [notmart] was the first to bring it up when saying

categories are not much descriptive because there are just one, a mechanism like tags would be more neat.

A couple of people agreed strongly with the ideia of tags, but the idea wasn’t develop within this topic anymore.

When discussing the last issue of the list (not much information about a widget), [cmarcelo] brought up the following:

I think having more information about the plasmoid (or at least make it possible). Having an easy way to preview (screenshot or live preview) directly on the list… This makes discovering easy IMHO.

This statement brought a whole other discussion.
It can be listed a few topics discussed about this issue:
- Live preview of the plasmoid can be quite challenging
- Preview could be a requirement for widgets developers.  “provide a screnie of your plasmoid” [pinheiro]
- Screenshots would also solve the problems and doesn’t seem really hard to get it
- We could have both: screenshots and live previews.
. If the developer provides a screenshot, use it, if he doesn’t, use live preview [jeez__]
. Use the screenshots and maybe a desktop file config key that says it supports live preview [notmart]
. Screenshots of the already used widgets, so it would be more recognizable to the user

[seele] brought, then, the important question:

where would that screenshot be displayed?

Some discussed using the previews instead of the icons, but it was noticed by [seele] herself that the thumbnails area is too small and the preview would lose a lot of details. It could be, though, exposed on a mouseover tooltip – a little larger tooltip.

This topic was finished here, but, at the end of the focusgroup session, [aseigo] entered and made an important statement about the preview/screenshots matter:

however … screenshots can be hard to see at small sizes and decent icons tend to be just as effective”,  “and esp as themes change, i’d hate to have to update screenshots all the time.

8 – What usability problems do you feel about the current widget explorer?

The first topic brought in this topic was the idea of hiding the widget explorer on drag and drog, so the plasmoid could reach more space of the desktop on the drop. The idea seemed to please most of them.
The second issue brought was the confusion about the contextual controls and global controls of the “add” and “remove” widgets. [seele] made a good statement about it:

Currently you select an item from a list and click the add widgets global button, but to remove it, you use the contextual remove button in the item. The separation of complementary controls is confusing – you would expect the controls to be grouped together.

That means: to add, you click on the add widget in the bottom, and to remove, you click on the “-” sign next to the item.

Still about the add and remove topic, it was noticed that the “-” sign is used as an indicator of how many of that widget is being used, and also as a control to remove the widget (which, by the way, removes all widgets at once but doesn’t made it previously clear to the user [MoRpHeUz]).

9 – And what about functionalities issues?

The installing and uninstalling new plasmoids turn out to be a major concern – participants claimed it is painful to do.
Suggestions were about more integration with gnhs and a common interface, not evolving more then 2 steps to install and use -

i.e. launching their applet browser from the applet browser and then the applet you picked doesn’t go directly on desktop but appears on the main appletbrowser list… [notmart]

Still within this topic, ideas of rating and commenting widgets were brought. Comments/rating appearing in something like the tooltip, as the preview tooltip idea. This ideas probably came to cover the necessity of more information about the applets. Another idea, to sum up, was: a single click on the widget would expand the item and show the new informations about it: preview/screenshot, comments/rating.

14 – Take a look at these mockups and talk about it:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Plasma+-+Add+Widgets+Mockup?content=101423
http://blusrcu.ba/nookie/?p=22

This topic can be described in topics:
- Long&linear list, mac os like, doesn’t solve the problems
- Something that can show more plasmoids is needed, cause there are lots of it
- Mockups show widgets explorer attached to the panel – seems not nice
- Window become opaque when drag is started

Untill now, the item “window become opaque” was the only one with approval of the most of the participants. The other issues weren’t solved, but brought us something to think about, indeed.

Some ideas about the way widgets are displayed came up, but that wasn’t a solved discussion too. The ideas are these to be considered:
- Multi-row thing. Concern: even less info appearing [notmart]. Possible solution: auto grow on hover [pinheiro]
- Tooltips
- Meta info pane (dolphin like) with screenshot, etc. [pinda]
- Categories in a side panel always on, instead of combo, or something like a tag cloud [pinda, notmart]
- Horizontal scroll list, taking advantage of the screen width [aseigo]

————-

At the end of the session, [aseigo] entered the channel and did a strong sum up of his point of view:

well, it’s probably all been discussed, but what i really would like to see is: * quick navigation, *categories, * search, * beauty, *simplicity”, “> install/remove is the other major feature set needed.

He also brought the question about the need of having the remove option:

removing applets that are running == not very useful anymore.

If there were more people at the time, this would surely bring lots of discussion.

————-

So this is it! As you can see, the focus group session gave us lots and lots of material do work on. It was 2 hours of good talking

Thanks again to everyone who participated and helped this matter.

annie.C