Hi Chris,
Am 05.03.2012 17:08, schrieb Christopher Brooks:
Hi Ruediger et al,
Here are some thoughts on specific features described on
http://opencast.jira.com/wiki/display/MH/Engage+1.4 . I'll try and
tease them apart point by point. Overall I really like some of the
looks you have changed here.
1. Sorting on title and other attributes.
+1, feature request we have been asked for locally.
2. Removing paging and replacing by continuous scrolling.
I like the idea but there is a good use case for paging that we see
here. E.g. "I know the lecture was about a month ago, the course is
two months in, so I'll just jump to halfway down the list of item".
How can we keep support for this feature while allowing the continuous
scrolling?
(the historical list of lectures is likely of higher interest
than the historical list of wall posts; does a continuous scrolling
method fit out needs?)
3. Implement A B C D E F G... for recordings list
Don't like it much as it clutters things up. Prefer that people just
search.
I'd like to answer 2. & 3. together: Just imagine that A B C... would be
15/01/12 22/01/12 29/01/12 instead if you sorted the recordings by date.
The scale would be adopted to the available space and the time you are
running your Matterhorn server already. Additional we might add a
date-picker here too. This would simply replace the paging by something
more meaningfull. I can never remember in our current installation if
the recordings from last september are on page 21 or 35. If you jumped
to last december you can scroll up and down and the continuous scrolling
will automatically reload the new data.
And navigation by searching just works if you know what you are
searching for. The navigation with the letters works better for browsing
through the content.
4. Implement a series tab
I like it. Have come comments on the metadata described in the mock up
(prefer a different date format, don't know what Mittwoch means, etc.
etc.), but overall I like it.
Here's a thought: Allow admins to create a "template" that describes
how the episode is rendered. E.g. that could write something like:
<span>$thumbnail</span>
<span><b>$episode.name</b></br><i>by $episode.instructor</i>
</span>
etc.
Outside of the scope of what you are providing, but this would allow us
to both have a consistent and cohesive delivered project yet limit the
amount of custom coding that needs to be done to make the UI
customized.
It's outside scope for us, but feel free to contribute this. And if we
start it here we probably should incorporate such a templating anywhere
in the system.
Same load ten at a time for episodes here, or a scrollbar and loading
all episodes?
yes again the continuous scrolling and the shortcuts from sorting.
5. Video controls/timeline functions
In this mock up:
http://opencast.jira.com/wiki/download/attachments/26574976/playermockup.jpg
What does the gear icon mean?
The same as in youtube. Setting the video quality (if available). But in
general these are mostly placeholders for upcoming features.
Will the scrubber be shown by default? (I think it should be)
I think so too.
I don't mind the accordion but worry that embeded single stream video
will make it difficult to pull off (what if there isn't room for all of
the items in the button group? e.g. if this video was half the size it
currently is, what would happen with "view statistics", "view
chapters", "view comments", etc?
This is not a mockup for the embed-player. We would not touch it and
keep it as it is currently.
What does "See more" mean as a tab in the bottom area?
The same as in the current Matterhorn player. The wording is not from
us, and as non native speakers we did not find a better one. It means
"more episodes from this series".
Agreed on> 2 video streams as a useful feature.
6. Toolbox on the left
Not sure on this, it dramatically changes the way the player works. We
need the ability to add more tools, but I'd like to hear some usability
results first. Is it confusing to students?
It will only be shown if you enabled functions that would need this
space. We already started to make more and more engage features
configureable with the tenancy config file.
7. Download, Share, Shortcuts
I don't mind this information being up here. Guess it means it won't
show up in the embedded player, but I think I am ok with that.
As I said nearly none of these enhancements will be available in the
embedded player. We are currently not planning on doing anything there.
If someone feels the need of improvements there he/she should make a
proposal for these and contribute the needed work.
General comments:
- Significant changes to the UI warrant not just gut instinct but some
usability testing. Is this really in scope for 1.4? If so, there is
no hope of us getting it out for May.
We would make these changes iterative. I guess that the general design
changes (i.e. the fat dark bar on top, less borders around the
video-display), the series tab sorting for series (as there is currently
no sorting for episodes in the rest interfaces) and the top information
menu will make it into 1.4. I don't know how far we will get with the
accordeon below the player. And we will keep the tools area on the left
for 1.5, so there should be enough time to test this concept.
- If you have a deployed prototype, I can see about getting some
usability testing done here, maybe Judy can as well? We could at
least do some less formal usability testing (think aloud, etc.).
We have not prototype we would like to discuss this first, before we
would spent our time on this.
- I have strong feelings on the colours. I don't care about the actual
colours much, but I think it's part of a bigger marketing question
for our application.
We currently have three areas with designs: the welcome page, the admin
ui and the engage ui. From my point of view all of these things look
totally different. In general there is not much that these pages have in
common even the major color of these three major parts is totally
different. The admin UI is mostly blue-green, the welcome page is
remembered by its massive red bar and the engage UIs main color is a
pastell-orange that is not used anywhere else in the system.
The colors we introduced are variations of the already used colors. In
our point of view these colors hamonize quite well and they are not as
saturated as the red, orange, blue-green and black that we currently use
to make the controls and the matterhorn appearance more decent and let
the content be more in the focus.
But as I said: the colors can be changed quickly. I would suggest that
when we have the HTML finished anyone who has an opinon on this should
submit a CSS, we make screenshot of them and vote on them. I am not
really interested in discussing the colors too much.
Rüdiger
Regards,
Chris
On Mon, 05 Mar
2012 12:10:15 +0100 Ruediger Rolf<[email protected]> wrote:
Hi list,
we would like to propose a general concept for the engage player in
the upcoming releases. Depending on the timeline for 1.4 we would
start with these changes and see how far we will come for the next
release. Other enhancements from this proposal may make it to later
releases then.
http://opencast.jira.com/wiki/display/MH/Engage+1.4
Please see this as a working document. These are the ideas that we
had here in Osnabrück how we can improve the Engage UIs. As I tried
to write down the concept on the page already here simply some
highlights:
Matterhorn Media Module:
+ Series View
+ Sorting of Series and Episodes
+ Continuous scrolling instead of paging (as known from facebook i.e.)
Matterhorn Engage Player:
+ 4 functional areas where UI elements for new features can be placed.
+ no more dialog overlays.
About the color scheme:
Please keep in mind that we implement this as CSS afterwards. We
would like to introduce some new colors to give the UI a fresh
updated look. It will be easy to make changes to the color scheme,
when we implemented the engage UI in HTML. So the discussion what
will be the colors we release matterhorn with can be one of the last
things that we have to decide about before a new release... If
somebody wants to contribute to this discussion then he should simple
create the new CSS files.
We are open for comments and contructive feedback on these designs.
This proposal is based on what we in Osnabrück are willing to
contribute into development in this area. If you would like to
request/propose extensive changes from our approach please keep in
mind that you should be willing to contribute resources for your
ideas too.
Thanks
Rüdiger
--
________________________________________________
Rüdiger Rolf, M.A.
Universität Osnabrück - Zentrum virtUOS
Heger-Tor-Wall 12, 49069 Osnabrück
Telefon: (0541) 969-6511 - Fax: (0541) 969-16511
E-Mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.virtuos.uni-osnabrueck.de
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