Brief update from Drupal UX testing for Acquia Build Week

1. Update from Drupal
UX testing
Angie "webchick" Byron
Acquia Build Week
August 18, 2015

2. About the participants
• 7 participants
• All front-end or back-end developers
• 5 of them had used Drupal 7 before (but not D8)
• All experienced site builders (Joomla!, WordPress,
HTML/PHP)
• In short, these were our people. Not random people
off the street, not content authors, but people in
Drupal's direct target audience.

3. About the scenarios
• All worded in such a way that Drupal-specific terminology was
not present:
• Create a piece of content
• Add a link to a page in the menu
• Create a content type (session) with fields
• Create a session, both desktop + mobile
• Edit content inline
• Place an existing block
http://tiny.cc/umn-scenarios

4. Help deks

5. What's working well?

6. Drupal 8++
• Mobile experience was impressive
• WYSIWYG worked as well as expected
• Content previews, accessible form errors
presented no issues
• New menu link autocomplete performed much
better compared to previous tests
• Same with re-skin of the Seven theme

7. What's not working well?

8. Terminology

9. “If all you use is Drupal, you're
not going to be able to make any
other kind of website.”

10. Mental model: front-to-back

11. “In WordPress, you don't have to
figure out how to place your
block inside your view inside your
region inside your homepage.”

12. Example task #1:
Place a block

13. 1

14. 2

15. 3

17. 4

19. Example task #2:
Create a session

22. “This seems like a jumbled up
hardware store with no
wayfinding.”

23. Oh, great! Forms!

24. One help desk call later…

25. Oh, great! Forms!
So far so good…

26. • TOO. MANY. OPTIONS.
(regression from D7)
• "Boolean" (rare) at top of list.
• Text (common) "below the fold."
• People are looking for words
like "checkboxes," "drop-
downs" here.
(regression from D7)
This page = fail. :(

27. What they really want is to see
this, and add fields to it.

28. Spark-related stuff
Create content
harder to find;
shortcuts hidden
by default
NO ONE found in-
place editing. :(
Sometimes the
"friendly pencil"
leads you
somewhere
horrifying. :P

29. What are we gonna do
about it?

30. Recommendations:
pre-8.0.0 release
• Fix regressions in the block UI (thanks, Tim!)
• Field UI improvements
• Make quick edit discoverable
• Bang out stupid kinks in WYSIWYG
• Some sort of short "intro" video that ships with D8 to
explain obscure terminology / how things fit
together
http://tiny.cc/umn-issues

31. Recommendations: 8.1.x+
• Drag/drop blocks
• Configurable layouts
• Previews for ALL the things
• Sample content in default install (snowman)
• Draft UI
http://tiny.cc/umn-issues

32. Recommendations: 9.x
• Perform terminology review and rename all of our
obscure words for things. Seriously. It's the #1 thing
that steers people away from Drupal.
• Change all of core's admin UIs to "front-end first" to
match users' "front to back" mental models
http://tiny.cc/umn-issues

33. See you there!
https://www.drupal.org/node/2497361