Quote from: dinocorn at Apr 07, 2016, 11:17 AMThis is great stuff. Anyone interesting in trying to get this going again?
Not sure what level of commitment I can offer at this point, but my thoughts FWIW:
There is still a lot of interest in UX/UI because of the state of the interface - it's perfect for 2009! LOL
IMO the working group became mired in challenges and oh, many things. Religious discussions, second guessing, finger waving, apathy/intertia...and a few negative assumptions re: our diligence/value/experience that seemed way off base...for starters.
I am well aware that we were spearheading and that comes with a natural level of flak and pain points, but I let this project go because I strongly felt that for many reasons we could not be successful under the community status quo. Meaning, much time invested for free, no result that impacts users.
I can only say that after 2 years the rubber has not hit the road yet in terms of an upgraded experience and there is a $50K drive for funding a new UI. Not sure what it all means to be honest, but if UX/design opinions were nickels that fifty K would be raised by now.
If the work were to continue, some thoughts/success factors to consider:
(a) Clarify expectations and get buy in on roles/responsibilities within the MODX dev ecosystem. Consider exactly how to coordinate our work in terms of the overall work. Let's not mince words, MODX is a community but the staff have strong sense of ownership over many UX/UI related things and we can't work separately nor can we design by committee. It felt like a bit of both before.
(b) The overlap with the vaporware is significant: 3.0 release; a budgeted (the $50K fund drive) accessible manager product; our work cuts across these projects with dependencies and makes charting a course toward a new experience ill advised without being part of the big picture. The direction is not clear here.
(c) Refocus the group: Working groups are essentially toothless in IT unless they are setting standards and coordinated into the overall direction of a product. Overall a UX/UI design group that leads the manager direction going forward would be ideal rather than a working group.
(d) Refocus the deliverables: aim for the output not just to be reports and recommendations (toothless), but target a tangible alternate manager design; starting with a UI prototype-then-product based on whatever input can reasonably be gathered. My thoughts are that a small group with a larger orbiting set of contributors target a new and very simple UI (with enough UX think behind it to make it worthwhile)
(e) Consider decoupling the manager in 3.0 so that "any manager" (yes, any manager) can be created and installed. This is beyond UIs grasp and there would need to be a commitment to engineer/code the core.
(f) Consider what's on everyone's mind now (2 years on) in terms of issues, features, competing product features. The fundamental flaws of the current UI are the same of course.
I stopped counting after about 50 hours invested in getting things started, and I'm not sure what I can offer as I was not effective in leading under the circumstances.
I would reconsider but the key is "what's different now?"
Best,
Gabriel
[ed. note: timbodrumbo last edited this post 8 years, 1 month ago.]