Results from Card Sorting targeting the Playlist Context Menu

[Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen]

Heya!

  Before i start - i am aware that this is likely tl;dr material - as such, 
for those with short attention span, the results of this are at the end of the 
email. Disclaimer: If you did not read through the results and reasonings, 
your responses regarding the results will be ignored at your peril ;)

  As most of you already know, Lydia and i conducted a little bit of card 
sorting regarding our horrendous playlist context menu. With the Last.fm 
service plugin enabled, you have 11 (eleven!) entries in the menu, which of 
course is entirely unacceptable.

  We sat down with a bunch of little sheets of paper on them, with each entry 
in the menu we have now written on it, and a good lump of other bits of paper 
and a pen for the participants to write any new ideas they might come up with 
while sorting the existing items around and such. With no further ado, here 
are the results of the test, after going through the great amount of data we 
got out of it. Ten participants took part, most Amarok developers (which of 
course skews the data fairly nastily), and two non-developers (Wendy and 
Nuno).

The Sorted Menus:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The following are the ten menus that people came up with:

1. Queue Track
   Stop Playing After This Track
   Remove From Playlist
   Edit Track Details...

2. Stop Playing After This Track
   Queue Track
   Show Under Various Artists
   Remove From Playlist
   Service Actions (submenu)
   Edit Track Details...

3. Remove From Playlist
   Stop Playing After This Track
   Play After Current Track

4. Show Context For This Track
   Queue Track
   Remove From Playlist
   Edit Track Details... / Fetch Cover
      (meaning fetching cover is done in dialogue)

5. Queue Track
   Play After Current Track
   Show in Collection Browser
   Show Context
   Remove From Playlist
   Stop Playing After This

6. Queue Track
   Stop Playing After This Track
   Edit Track Details...
   Remove From Playlist
   Service Actions (submenu)

7. Remove From Playlist
   Queue Track
   Stop Playing After Track
   Show in Collection Browser
   Last.fm: Love

8. Remove From Playlist
   Service Actions (submenu)
   Show Context
   Play After Current Track
   Show in Collection Browser
   Edit Track Details...

9. Remove From Playlist
   Edit Track Details...
   Show Context
   Cover (submenu)
   Show Under Various Artists

10.Show Context
   Last.fm: Love
   Remove From Playlist
   Copy To Collection (submenu)
   Edit Track Details...

Pseudo-statistics:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The columns in the table below are:
1. The number of people who put the item in their menu
2. The number of the person to come up with the item (in the case of a new 
item)
3. The menu item title

6   -   Queue Track
5   -   Stop After This Track
10  -   Remove From Playlist
7   -   Edit Track Details...
2   -   Show Under Various Artists
3   2   Service Actions (submenu)
3   3   Play After Current Track
5   4   Show Context
3   5   Show In Collection Browser
2   -   Last.fm: Love
1   2   Cover (submenu)
1   10  Copy to Collection

A note on the second to last item. While number 2 came up with the item, only 
number 9 used it in their menu.

Comments:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
The following are rationalisations taken from comments from the participants 
during the test, and some conclusions that can be drawn from the suggested 
menus themselves:

* "Edit Track Details..." is often found at the end
* "Queue Track" is often at the top
* "Remove From Playlist" is often towards the top
* Many mentioned "Show Under Various Artists" as perceived as being collection
  management or should be in the Edit Track Details dialogue
* Cover items often mentioned as either collection management, something which
  should happen in the cover manager or in the Edit Track Information dialogue
* "Stop After This Track" is often towards the top, except for one person who
  has it at the end. (Less obviously towards the top than Remove From
  Playlist...")
* "Play After Current Track" superseded by the "Insert As Next" PUD action
* "Show Context" shows up half way through the test, and then most like it and
  feature it at the middle or towards the top.
* "Show In Collection Browser" is argued as a way of reaching editing things,
  but many others liked it and kept both it and "Edit Track Details..."
* The "Cover" submenu was created very early in the test, but was discarded by
  nearly all participants.
* "Copy To Collection" shows up last, but has very valid use cases for tracks
  not already in the collection (and arguably also for tracks in the
  collection, though here it can be considered a pendant to "Show In
  Collection Browser" for tracks that are not in the collection already - in
  short, copy to the chosen collection and then show in the collection browser
  where the track now resides)

The Three New Menus:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
  All of this leads to three new menus. The reason we have three is that 
certain changes to the eventual final version either conflict with our current 
string freeze, or depend on features that are not available in Amarok 2.1 but 
will be in 2.2.
  The menus below require certain things to happen in Amarok - specifically 
the Edit Track Details dialogue will have the additional feature of handling 
covers there. This does not add any new strings, since the same strings can be 
used to do this as are used in the context menu currently (Fetch Cover, 
Display Cover and so on). Furthermore, any place the cover is present should 
be an element where you can interact with the cover (click to display full 
size, right-click to manage). This can be postponed, though new strings will 
also not be required for this (same reasoning as before).
  The menus for 2.1.1 and 2.2 include an item called "Service Actions *" - 
this item covers the concept of a conditional submenu. What this means is, if 
you have more than two items to show from services (Last.fm: Love, Last.fm: 
Ban, Libre.fm: Love, Libre.fm: Ban, for example), the itemsare put into a 
submenu called Service Actions. The same is applied here, if a service 
provides more than two actions, those actions are put into a submenu carrying 
the service's name. The reason this is not done already in 2.1.0 is that it 
requires a new string.

  And now, the menus:

2.1.0 menu:
..........................

Queue Track
Stop After This Track
Remove From Playlist

Last.fm: Love (and any other service actions)

Edit Track Details...

2.1.1 menu:
..........................

Queue Track
Stop After This Track
Remove From Playlist

Service Actions *

Show In Collection Browser / Copy To Collection (submenu)
Tags & Information...

2.2 menu:
..........................

Stop After This Track
Remove From Playlist

Service Actions *

Show Context
Show In Collection Browser / Copy To Collection (submenu)
Tags & Information...

-- 
..Dan // Leinir..
http://leinir.dk/

                          Co-
                            existence
                          or no
                            existence

                          - Piet Hein