Hello Horizon team,

We've been working on some concepts that we'd like to see be incorporated in 
the launch instance workflow new UI or existing UI.  We have a related design 
session at the summit and would love to get feedback! We'll be showing some 
early prototyping work that we've been doing.

http://junodesignsummit.sched.org/event/555561439e8187a25985473ea53cc078#.U2-w3ldLpT5

https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/juno-summit-graffiti

Thanks,
Travis

From: Liz Blanchard [mailto:lsure...@redhat.com]
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2014 3:42 PM
To: OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions)
Subject: Re: [openstack-dev] [Horizon] [UX] Summary of Horizon Usability 
Testing and plan for Summit session

One last addition, I promise :)

Another item that we would like to tackle in Juno based on the Usability 
Testing results is to make some improvements to the way we give our users 
inline help in forms. I've put together a doc that includes our current 
solution and some suggestions for improvements. If there is time, we will be 
discussing this during the session as well:
http://people.redhat.com/~lsurette/OpenStack/ImprovementstoInlineHelpinHorizon.pdf

See you all next week!

Liz
On May 7, 2014, at 3:50 PM, Liz Blanchard 
<lsure...@redhat.com<mailto:lsure...@redhat.com>> wrote:


Hi All,

Another topic on the agenda for this session is to talk a bit about creating 
some guidelines around Error messaging in Horizon, and hopefully this will 
trickle through other components as needed. I've put together some initial 
thoughts around this topic and want to get it out to the list so folks might 
have some time to take a look before discussing at the session. If you have any 
feedback, feel free to respond before summit and I can update this doc.

http://people.redhat.com/~lsurette/OpenStack/ImprovingtheUXofMessageswithinHorizon.pdf

Thanks,
Liz
On Apr 30, 2014, at 2:50 PM, Jacki Bauer 
<jacki.ba...@rackspace.com<mailto:jacki.ba...@rackspace.com>> wrote:


Hi everyone,
As Liz mentioned, we did some testing and one of the big findings was that the 
Launch Instance form had some usability issues. I took a stab at mocking up a 
launch instance process that addresses some of these issues. You can read the 
usability findings 
here<https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Horizon-usability-test-findings>.

So, I know some of you will ask about work that is already being done around 
improving the launch instance form - 
here<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO62UUQPTCM> and 
here<https://blueprints.launchpad.net/horizon/+spec/launch-instance-ux-enhancement>.
  That work is represented here too! I took what I felt to be what was best 
about the current form and best about the new work, addressed the usability 
issues, and tried to come up with something that wasn't too different from 
either of these.

If you are interested in any of the design thinking/reasoning behind the 
mockups, go ahead and keep reading below, otherwise, just take a look at the 
attachment.  Feedback is welcome!

Cheers,
Jacki

Why I did things the way I did:

  *   I used a multi-step form for a few reasons. 1-The Horizon people are 
interested in wizard patterns that could be used for launching instances and 
other step by step workflows. 2-The current launch instance divides the config 
options into tabs, but users often didn't notice the tabs until they tried to 
launch the instance and got an error. The "*" indicating required fields on 
each tab confused users as well. Since all but one tab contained required 
fields, the tabs didn't do anything to reduce the number of clicks a user had 
to make in order to complete the form.

  *   A best practice for wizards is to never reveal specific steps to the user 
if the number or names of those steps can change.  So, I settled on four steps. 
Some users might not want to visit all these steps, and this is maybe a flaw. 
Maybe we can think about a way to allow users to skip steps.
  *   I decided to stack all fields vertically with labels to the left. I did 
this because I wanted the layout of form fields to be consistent throughout. 
This layout is very readable and pretty standard. It saves vertical space too.
  *   I changed the network selection to checkboxes. Users thought the drag and 
drop style control was inconsistent with the rest of Horizon.
  *   Users really liked the graphs that show their quota when they are 
selecting a flavor. But this didn't really work with the new layout, so I 
settled on a different way of presenting the same information. It's not as 
visually appealing as the graphs were, but it's more flexible - could be used 
throughout Horizon to show quota information on demand and in context.
  *   I added the ability to create key pairs. This was a big finding from the 
usability study.
  *   I did not add the ability to create a network on the fly. Another big 
finding from the usability study was that users were frustrated by the fact 
that they had to have at least one network created to launch an instance. 
However, we know that creating networks is largely an admin task, not an 
end-user one. So instead, I made it impossible for a user to open up the launch 
instance form when there are no networks.
  *   There are more items selected for the user by default.

     *   Defaults have some advantages: they allow users to progress more 
quickly through forms. They also reduce the need for complex logic and error 
messages, because it becomes harder for users to leave something blank.
     *   The disadvantage to defaults is that the user may not notice a field. 
Since there will be no validation message forcing their attention onto the 
field, they might wonder how their instance came to have the configuration that 
it does.
     *   Defaults could be problematic for admins who do not want to encourage 
users to select a pre-defined default. It might mean that we need to allow 
admins to specify these default values for their environment.

  *   The flavor selection has been expanded from a drop down to a list with 
details about the resources associated with each flavor, because we have some 
indication that users want more details about flavors when they are selecting 
them. In the current launch instance form, flavor information is available but 
it's somewhat disconnected from the flavor selector itself.



On 04/24/2014 09:10 AM, Liz Blanchard wrote:

Hi All,

One of the sessions that I proposed for the Horizon track is to review the 
results that we got from the Usability Test that was run on Horizon in early 
March. I wanted to share some of the background of this test and the high level 
results with you all so that we can start the conversation on this list and 
then continue with agreeing on next steps during Summit. There will be a few 
follow-ups to this e-mail from myself and Jacki Bauer which will propose some 
potential solutions to the high priority findings, so be on the look out for 
those :)

---Quick overview of Usability Testing...What is it? Why do it?---
Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to 
evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable 
usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the 
system.


---Who was involved? What did we need to do to prepare?---
A number of user experience engineers from a bunch of different companies got 
together and helped plan for a usability test that would focus on self-service 
end users and the ease of use of the Horizon Dashboard as it exists for the 
Icehouse release. This effort spun off from the Persona work that we've been 
doing together. Some folks in the group are just getting into contributing to 
the design of OpenStack and doing a baseline usability test of Horizon was a 
great introduction to how the usability of the Horizon UI could continue to be 
improved based on user's direct feedback.

What we needed to get done before actually jumping into the testing:
   1) Agree on the goals of the testing.
   2) Create a screener and send out to the OpenStack community.
   3) Create a list of tasks that the user would complete and give feedback on 
during the testing.

---Who we tested?---
6 people who we considered to be "self-service end users" based on their 
screener responses.

---What were the tasks that were tested?---

Scenario 1: Launching an instance
Individual Tasks:
-Create a security key pair.
-Create a network.
-Boot from cirros image.
-Confirm that instance was launched successfully.

Scenario 2: Understand how many vCPUs are currently in use vs. how much quota 
is left.
Individual Tasks:
-Check out Overview Page to review current quota use/limit details.

Scenario 3: Take a snapshot of an Instance to save for later use.
Individual Tasks:
-Either Launch an instance successfully, or identify a running instance in the 
instance view.
-Choose to take a snapshot of that instance.
-Confirm that the snapshot was successful.

Scenario 4: Launch an instance from a snapshot.
Individual Tasks:
-Choose to either create an instance and boot from a snapshot, or identify a 
snapshot to create an instance from.
-Confirm that the instance was started successfully.

Scenario 5: Launch an instance that boots from a specific volume.
Individual Tasks:
-Create a volume.
-Launch an instance using Volume X as a boot source.

---When and how we ran the tests?---
These hour long tests were run over the first two weeks of March 2014. We 
focused on the latest bits that could be seen in the Icehouse release. The 
moderator (a UX researcher from HP) would ask the questions and the rest of the 
group would vigourously take notes :) After all of the testing was complete, we 
spent some time together debriefing and agreeing on the prioritized list of 
updates that would be best to make to the Horizon UI based on user feedback.

---What were the findings?---

High Priority
* Improve error messages and error message catalog.
* Fix Launch Instance workflow for end user and power user.
* Improve informational help information about form fields.
* Fix terminology. (e.g. launch instance, boot, shutoff, shutdown, etc.)
* Show details for key pair and network in Launch Instance workflow.
* Recommend a new Information Architecture.

Medium Priority
* Create UI guidelines (of best practices) for Developers to use.
* Improve Online Help.
* Provide clearer indication the application is working after clicking a button 
and the application doesn't respond immediately.
* Ensure consistency of network selection. (Drag and drop of networks very 
inconsistent from the other pieces of the launch instance modal)
* Create consistency of visualizations and section of action button 
recommendations on Instance table.
* Suggest defaults for the forms entry fields.
* Provide Image information details during image selection.

Low Priority
* Allow users to edit the network an instance after launching instance.
* Resolve confusion around the split inline actions button.
* Explain what the Instance Boot Source field in Create Instance modal.
* Provide description/high level information about flavors for flavor selection.
* Make sorting clearer visually.
* Provide solution for subnet checkbox to improve usability.

Nice to Have
* Provide "Save as Draft" option in the wizard.
* Change security group default name to "Default security group".

Well if you've read this far, thank you for your interest in this topic!! We 
look forward to sharing some design proposals over the next week and continuing 
the discussion on tackling some of these items at Summit. Please let me know if 
anyone has any questions or concerns.

Best,
Liz


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