Re: Modx Manager UX Working Group

This is great stuff. Anyone interesting in trying to get this going again?

Quote from: dinocorn at Apr 07, 2016, 11:17 AM

This is great stuff. Anyone interesting in trying to get this going again?

Hell yeah!

Quote from: dinocorn at Apr 07, 2016, 11:17 AM

This 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 ago.]

Gang:
There are a lot of valid design ideas to be found in another tool I am evaluating:
getgrav.org

No, this is not a suggestion to replace MODX or that it even competes with it, but for the purposes of getting to a new place with the MODX manager, it is a tangible example to get my/our head out of the box.

The admin (manager) module is itself a plug in. (meaning you can have more than one).
You can also make many config changes directly in yaml files
The layout and features for managing content (not applications) is very good, and yes there are some issues.
If you install and just check out the admin screens and their concepts it may provide some clues and ideas to go forward.

I can certainly drop a few insights that I discover.

Peace.

Quote from: timbodrumbo at Apr 14, 2016, 05:39 PM

Quote from: dinocorn at Apr 07, 2016, 11:17 AM

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.

(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.

These are valid concerns. I would say don't let the direction of the LLC detract from any direction the community wishes to take. This is an open source project after all. There are some exciting announcements coming that will bring more transparency to the community, and bring the community closer to advising the direction the project takes. I know this sounds like a pipe dream, or you've heard it before, but I promise. It's coming. In the near future.

I've been significantly investing in Proof of Concepts for a "MODX Next" interface. This is the most complete lab to date:
https://github.com/jpdevries/matboard/tree/gh-pages/labs/manage-users#manage-users-lab

It is being thoroughly documented and also has a screencast a TOC and several different sections explaining the progressive enhancements and considerations made.

It is a concept for the Manage Users page, but the pattern could also apply to Settings (think contexts and settings rather than user groups and users), or even quickly editing Resources. The interface is HTML-first and progressively enhanced with React in an unopionated way, meaning the 11kb "React driver" could be swapped out with an "Angular driver" or an "Ember driver" or whatever else without affecting the user interface. In other words, the tool that is providing the async enhancements could be swapped and the user would be none the wiser.

There is not a single critical feature that relies on JavaScript or the mouse. The interface is screen reader friendly even without ARIA and supports a High Contrast mode for the visually impaired and night owls alike.

I would love to get the community more involved in this initiative. We can prove these concepts together, and advocate the design patterns, concepts, and perhaps even some of the codebase be found in the Next manager interface.

Quote from: timbodrumbo at Apr 14, 2016, 05:39 PM

Quote from: dinocorn at Apr 07, 2016, 11:17 AM

(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.

Yes!!! That's the plan of attack as far as I am concerned. We need to do away with the notion that there "a Manager" and a particular JavaScript framework that enhances it. We need to bring creative freedom into the manager!

It looks like Slim may be a part of MODX Next (or whatever we're calling it). How would that affect this process?