Hhhipppo, thank you for sending these questions. It's awesome to get this
detailed and thoughtful analysis.

I can answer maybe two of your questions off the top of my head -- no, I
don't think we'll autoscroll as you type, for exactly the reason that you
mention; I agree with you about the gray for closed topics; everything else
is Maybe, I don't know, Good question or TBD, as appropriate.

But -- even if it takes us a minute to get our heads around the questions
and answers -- I want to say thanks, and we'll think about all of this a
lot more, thanks to you. :)


Danny

On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 2:26 PM, Hhhippo <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi Pau,
>
> This looks really great! I have a couple of comments and suggestions (hope
> I remember them all), but there are a lot of ideas I like. My very first
> reaction was "Wow!".
>
> * First, I have to say it again, this looks like the mobile version,
> embedded in a desktop-version Wikipedia frame. But I can live with getting
> the mobile version first and hoping somebody will write a desktop skin
> later.
>
> * I'm not sure I like the phrase "Browse topics":
> - The equivalent on article pages says "Contents".
> - When I see "Browse" I would expect more structure than a linear list to
> choose from.
> - Sometimes an actual topic title appears in that place, maybe the
> standard phrase should be formatted differently, like italic or gray?
>
> * Autoscrolling to the first match: will this be done after each
> keystroke? That could mean a lot of loading of topics.
>
> * The filters are AND'ed, right? (As in "show only topics where all
> selected filters apply")? Do we need an option for OR as well? The most
> common case is probably applying only one filter, so users could expect
> that clicking another one will replace the current one (though the
> shortcuts in the ToC menu solve that to some extent). For some filters also
> the inverse would be useful (view only topics that are unwatched, closed,
> etc.).
>
> * What does "Activity v" do, and what's "Anytime"?
> Can you filter on different types of activity and then optionally on when
> they happened? Can you also say "Show me all activity since my last visit"?
>
> * "Showing n topics": n is the number of topics passing the filter, right?
> They might not all be visible or even loaded at the same time, so maybe
> "showing" is not quite right.
>
> * Browsing: I don't like the blue background of "Browse topics" when the
> ToC is open. This looks like a button (actually, it doesn't, but in the
> same way as buttons on newer parts of the mediawiki UI or on facebook
> don't, so one might think it's a button). The function of that area is
> somewhat comparable to that of a 2-state button, but those shouldn't be
> labeled with a verb that only makes sense in one of the states.
>
> * I don't like the gray text for indicating closed topics. That looks like
> they're not accessible, e.g. not yet loaded.
>
> * Marking topics with recent activity: the color we're familiar with in
> this context (from e.g. history pages) is green, not blue. I'd suggest
> green for new, red for removed, yellow for changed, and blue for search
> results (with a workaround for colorblind people, like a small icon or a
> tooltip).
>
> What's the rationale for coloring the icons on the right? This could be
> misunderstood as 'recently added to watchlist' or 'recently contributed to
> by myself'. If it is meant to just make the marking of the entire line more
> prominent, one could instead add a second colored bar on the right edge.
>
> "Recent" means "since my last visit", right?
>
> * Can the ToC and the filter box be open at the same time? Should the
> footers be unified? This would just need a 'clear' button on the ToC
> footer. (And maybe a more obvious distinction between filter presets and
> filter refinements.)
>
> * Can these filters also be activated by URL parameters (so one can link
> to a certain view)?
>
> * "ToC and Search": Just to make sure I get it right: with the filtered
> ToC as shown on the slide, the search counter would show "1 of 7", and the
> ToC icon "3", right?
> Btw: this example shows another disadvantage of coloring the icons: one
> could think the blue bar is there because I contributed to this topic, not
> because there's recent activity in it.
>
> * Should there be a ToC entry for the board header? There might be search
> results in it, I might have edited it, I can watch the board, and I might
> want to go there (mobiles don't have a 'home' key). So all the functions of
> a ToC entry would be useful here as well. Not sure how to call that entry
> though.
>
> * I'm undecided about the secondary entry point for advanced search. The
> search dropdown has no name, so it's not obvious that the two are the same.
> Plus, the advanced search has quite some options, which is good, but can be
> overwhelming at first. Maybe the entry through the ... menu should be the
> only entry?
>
> @Danny: I find the sorting very valuable, but I don't change it much,
> usually leave it at 'Recently active topics' (this actually sounds like a
> filter, not a sort order). So as long as the state is remembered it's fine
> to have it tugged away in a menu.
>
> Overall: I think the arrangement could be optimized a bit to make clearer
> what 'button' does what and what can be found where, to avoid duplication,
> and to keep advanced options out of sight of unsuspecting newbies (but
> still easy to access if you want to).
> But I don't have specific suggestions for a different design right now,
> and probably won't have the time to come up with something faster than you
> will.
>
> So: great start, I'm looking forward to seeing something like this in
> action.
>
>
> Cheers
> Hhhippo
>
>
>
> On 12/02/2014 11:15 PM, Danny Horn wrote:
>
>> Pau, this is awesome work.
>>
>> It makes sense to put sorting, search and browse all in the same header
>> area. Those features are all doing similar functions -- helping people
>> find the conversations they're most interested in. But figuring out how
>> to squeeze all three into the same space, plus advanced bonus options,
>> is challenging.
>>
>> Your solution for switching between the neutral/browsing/searching
>> states on the Overview and Search slides looks really good to me. The
>> user gets a call to action for both search and browse when they open the
>> page, and the header switches focus between search and browse, depending
>> on which one is more relevant to what the user's doing.
>>
>> This design also downplays the sorting element in the header, which has
>> to disappear from the header when the user scrolls down anyway. I don't
>> know how valuable people find the sorting right now; this will help us
>> to find out. :)
>>
>> I do think that the advanced search and filter features get a little
>> confusing by the end. There's a lot of power and customization in this
>> design, and that brings a lot of signals to process.
>>
>> For example, on the Browsing (ToC) slide, the topic titles on the left
>> side of the panel use dark gray/light gray to indicate whether a topic
>> is open or closed, but all of the icons are light gray on the right side
>> of the panel -- except for the one that's blue, which indicates that
>> there's recent activity on that topic. When you add in the
>> faint-to-bright yellow highlighting in the next slide, that's a lot of
>> different pieces of information marked by changes in color and contrast.
>>
>> We may need to figure out the use cases for filtering and advanced
>> search, and do a rough-draft priority ranking -- maybe starting with
>> you, me, Nick, and whoever's interested, and then opening it up for the
>> user research sessions?
>>
>> And hooray for the user research -- we haven't done any research
>> sessions on new features since I've been on the team, and I really want
>> to. :) How has it worked on other teams?
>>
>>
>> Danny
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Pau Giner <[email protected]
>> <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi all,
>>
>>     I created some designs to add more detail about finding topics in
>>     Flow (search, ToC, filtering and sorting) based on your feedback
>>     (thanks for the feedback!).
>>
>>     I still want to iterate on the design for consistency and other
>>     improvements but I wanted to share them earlier. I published the
>>     designs at Commons
>>     <https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flow-search-details.pdf>
>> and created
>>     a slide deck version
>>     <https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/presentation/d/
>> 1DQabV3mjE9ReV9zs1qAi8u_A5560QEVX4aK95pc0Whs/edit?usp=sharing>
>>     to allow comments in context.
>>
>>     With this and the former prototype I think we can start planning
>>     some research sessions to check with users which ideas work and
>>     which ones we need to focus on improving.
>>
>>     Feel free to provide any feedback.
>>
>>     Pau
>>
>>
>>     On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 6:35 AM, Matthew Flaschen
>>     <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>>
>>         On 11/23/2014 08:08 AM, Pau Giner wrote:
>>
>>                  In the current status of talk pages the ToC just
>>             appears at the
>>                  beginning showing the full-titles, which takes most of
>>             the real
>>                  state in long conversations and there is not an easy
>>             way to go back
>>                  to it once you get immersed into the conversations. Do
>>             we have info
>>                  on bugs/requests/comments from our users that
>>             illustrate more
>>                  details about the navigation between topics and content?
>>
>>
>>         I agree having to scroll back to the top (or use the back
>>         functionality if you used the link before) to use the TOC is
>>         suboptimal, and one of the use cases the Flow TOC solves.
>>
>>         There may be bugs about this (on the old-style TOC), but if not,
>>         that's not indication that it works perfectly.  People would not
>>         (yet) expect something like the Flow TOC on a regular talk page,
>>         since nothing else affixes to the top like that.
>>
>>         That doesn't mean that it's not useful, just that people
>>         wouldn't know to ask for it (even if they end up liking it).
>>
>>         Matt Flaschen
>>
>>
>>         _________________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>>     --
>>     Pau Giner
>>     Interaction Designer
>>     Wikimedia Foundation
>>
>>     _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
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