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The Views 2 user interface - retracing the design process

yoroy's picture
Submitted by yoroy on Fri, 07/18/2008 - 22:40.

Session recording

Attached files

Placement
Session time: 
08/28/2008 - 15:00 - 08/28/2008 - 15:45
Conference booklet summary and bio
Article for conference booklet: 
Version 2 of the popular views module was rewritten from scratch to make it “Expandable in every direction“. With more flexibility comes more complexity and so it was quite the challenge to find a workable user interface that could expose all these features in a usable manner. This session will tell the story of how the new interface came to be. It will show how developers and interface designers worked together to find a solution for a complex interface problem: - Views1 to Views 2: adding multiple dimensions of infinite flexibility. - Concepts, wireframes, and other false starts. - Two basic concepts: sentences and summaries. - The end result. Do you like it? What could be better? But that is only the story for this particular module. How can we repeat this ? We'll offer guidelines for community collaboration on user interface design and some tips for process and tools. Then, let's open the discussion on how to make this process possible for other Drupal projects.
Bios for conference booklet: 
Roy Scholten designs, illustrates and animates things for the web. He is involved with Drupal since 2006 and contributes interface designs, usability improvements, icon design, marketing art and copy and event organisation. He runs his own small design studio in Hilversum, the Netherlands.

Overview

Version 2 of the popular Views module was rewritten from scratch to make it even more flexible and powerful. With more flexibility comes more complexity and quite some time was spent working out a user interface that could expose all these powerful features without becoming an enormous scrolling form. This session retraces the process that led to the current interface, showcasing how developers and interface designers worked together to find a working solution to a complex problem.

Agenda

- Views1 to Views 2: adding multiple dimensions of infinite flexibility.
- Concepts, wireframes, and other false starts.
- Two basic concepts: sentences and summaries.
- The end result. Do you like it? What could be better? How can we translate the good bits to other use cases?

Goals

First of all, this presentation wants to provide an overview of the design process for this particular user interface. The larger picture is that the web is rapidly evolving from websites into web applications. The Drupal UI toolkit has to be extended with smarter and more complex form widgets to build the interfaces for these web apps. Ideally the good stuff in Views 2 can find it's way into other Drupal applications as well.

Resources
Bring your own feedback on the new interface! What do you like, what do you think could be improved?

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