[UI] QML CV usability feedback

[Bart Cerneels]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 3:47 PM, Thomas Pfeiffer <colomar at autistici.org> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> I've now compiled the QML branch of Amarok and will give some feedback to the
> new Context View, as promised about a month ago. I'm addressing the whole list
> since I'm not sure who will be working on the CV in the near future.
>
> First of all: I really like the look of the new CV! It's much cleaner and
> fits better with the rest of Amarok's appearance compared to the old
> one. I'd recommend changing the blue boxes at the bottom of the collection and
> playlist areas to some shade of grey as well though, since now without the
> CV's blue, they look rather out of place.

I'm a bit worried about the sea-of-grey effect. The coloring of CV and
toolbars might have been badly implemented in the past, but at least
it prevented that uniform grey look.
Perhaps we can do more background images and some color shades, but
with the KDE color scheme it's always the question of what color role
to use.

>
> Now for the usability feedback: It's a bit difficult to give much feedback on
> the current state, because the more tricky things (like the integration of
> additional CV "modules" or their configuration) are not implemented yet. Of
> course the good thing about it is that we can work together on interaction
> design for those things before they are implemented, which is less work than
> having to change things afterwards.
> My feedback to what's currently there:
> - The icons look nice in monochrome, but currently they lack a bit in "click
> affordance", meaning that it isn't obvious right away that they are actual
> buttons vs. merely information icons, because they look very different to the
> other button icons in Amarok. Maybe some very very slight plasticity effect
> might help there. Perhaps you should ask the KDE artists team if they can
> create icons for you which look clearly like clickable icons while still
> fitting visually in the CV?

I had to look up the definition of "affordance". Learned something new
today, thanks.
Perhaps the solution is to make all the buttons in Amarok look similar/nicer?

> - Unless you plan to re-implement the drag-mouseover feature of the old CV,
> the CV should definitely be placed on the right of the UI instead of the center
> by default now. The mouseover options were the only argument
> for keeping the CV in the center before, and with that removed, it would just
> make no sense at all to keep it there and forcing users to drag items all the
> way over the CV to the playlist.

You are taking about the PopUpDropper (PUD) which we intent to keep.
Even if we didn't the default layout should keep the context in the
middle for consitancy with earlier Amarok 2 verions.

> - I think placing the different content types (lyrics, Wikipedia, etc.) in one
> long column that can be scrolled continuously instead of switching between
> them would be better. Of course users could still scroll directly to each type
> with buttons above, but they could also scroll through them continually. The
> advantage would be that a user interested in everything about the current song
> could just read on from lyrics to Wikipedia to e.g. concert dates without
> having to click any buttons, bzt can still use the buttons to jump to a
> specific type of information.

You mean without a scroll bar for the wikipedia content? It might be a
bit long, but I personally loath double scrollbars, so certainly in
favor.

> - I don't know what exactly the new CV currently pulls in from Wikipedia, but
> it isn't the artist's main article. The main article would make more sense
> here, since the things currently shown are not very informative.

Ideally we'd show Artist, Album and track pages in that order. It's
just a bit tricky to do since we are using heuristics to search and a
bit of scraping to get the content. We should be using something like
dbpedia.org

>
> And finally for the future interaction design:
> First of all, I'd need to know which features of the old CV you are planning
> to re-implement and which ones you are planning to cut. Depending on these
> decisions, we can start working on interaction design for the planned
> features.
>
> I'm looking forward to working with the Amarok team again (and now I've finally
> got the hang of compiling Amarok master or branches from Git easily, so I can
> try things out immediately)!

Cool, I'll make sure you commit to that. I'll keep the long pointy
stick ready ;)

>
> Thomas
>
> P.S.: I'd like to establish the [UI] tag for UI-related threads on this list
> so that people like me who don't understand purely technical threads anyway
> can concentrate on the threads relevant for them. If that's okay with you
> guys, I'd appreciate if you could add that tag to the subjects of UI-related
> mails in the future.

Good idea. But reading the purely technical and social topics should
not be avoided. They are the context in which the UI makes sense.
UI threads certainly need screenshots. Do we have an easy place to
upload them and keep persistent links? Various services around, but
I'd like to know which work best and standardize a bit.

Bart