making drupal 7 simple to use for everyone

Making Drupal 7 Simple to Use for Everyone

Dries BuytaertDrupal founder, Acquia CTO

Acquia

@dries

Lynne CapozziVice President Marketing

Acquia

@bryanhouse

Jeff NoyesDirector of User Experience

Acquia

@jeffnoyes

Housekeeping

Can you hear us? Raise your hand in WebExUnable to listen via your computer’s audio– Request phone access

Housekeeping

Today’s webinar is being recorded. Slides and recording will be posted in next 24 hours at:

– http://acquia.com/community/resources/recorded_webinars

Submit questions via WebEx, we’ll answer as many as we can at end

–Give it a try & tell us where you joining from today

Upcoming Webinars

Thursday February 18th

–How Open Source Frameworks for Social Publishing Eliminate WCM Shortfalls

Thursday February 25th- Preview of Drupal Gardens - 15 Minutes from Design

to Online

Register Today - http://acquia.com/webinars

Introduction

Dries Buytaert–Founder and Project Lead, Drupal–President, Drupal Association–Co-founder & CTO, Acquia

Jeff Noyes–Director of User Experience, Acquia

6

How did we get here?

Choosing the Right TechnologyA Social Publishing Platform

Drupal “… is as much a Social Software platform as it is a web content management system.” CMS Watch, The Web CMS Report 2009

blogs /wikis

forums / comments

socialranking

social tagging

users

social networks

workflow

taxonomy

semantic web

RSS

content

analytics

ContentMgmtSystems

SocialSoftware

Tools

Overview

Drupal’s perceived as being hard to use.

Usability lab testing

Several formal lab tests between March 2008/2009 conducted to answer these questions...

– What are the main challenges to new Drupal users?

– Is the language and terminology intuitive to users?

– How long does it take users to perform basic web development tasks with no formal Drupal training

– Do recent design changes work (password checker, vertical tabs, etc

Lab test results can’t be ignored

Lots of vernacular confusion Page vs Story, Content vs Content type, Primary Links, etc.

Inability to find content after creating it

Mental model of creating pages not expected

Users expected WYSIWYG vs. “input format”

Unable to distinguish administrative layer

Overwhelming administrative page

Menu confusion with parent item

A usability team is born

Evolving team of 8-16 people join forces to help make Drupal easier. Two people stand out.

Roy Scholten (A.K.A Yoroy) for sound design insights.

Bojhan Summers for staying on top of the issues, rounding up the troops & beating the UX drum.

Acquia hires Mark Boulton

D7ux.org

MicroprojectsOverall information architectureShortcutsMedia managerAppearanceDashboardProfileForumsWatchdogTriggers Pathauto

and more...

15

Drupal 7’s user experience goal

Drupal 7’s user experience goals

Make the most frequent tasks easy and less frequent tasks achievable.

Design for the 80%

Privilege the Content Creator

Make the default settings smart

17

Drupal 7’s usability highlights

Who benefits?

Content Managers–People that spend most of their time

managing content, e.g. writers, editorsetc.

Designers & Developers–People that spend most of their time

building & theming sites.

Usability highlights

Simplifying the content managers role.

Simplified startup optionsUsers can now start with a common set of pre-configured features, or take the advanced route and start from scratch.

Password verify made more clearUsers now have a better experience setting site credentials.

Information architecture ImprovementsMore concrete categories for a clearer map of the Drupal system. - Emphasis on basic CMS tasks (content, structure, people etc) and pushed advance config a layer deeper (80/20)

Appearance

Recently added content made easier to find.Users can now find recently added content by clicking “content”

Appearance

Point-and-click edit.Users can now edit content more quickly and configure blocks more quickly.

ShortcutsAccelerate by creating shortcuts to most used destinations - by role

Add shortcutsQuickly add shortcuts to your most usedlocations.

Admin layer

Overlay...Clear separation of front—and back—end tasks..

Site layer

Sitewide dashboardUsers now have a customizable dashboard.

Clearer content/help textRewrote/removed copy – making Drupal more friendly and concise. Focused on making help more helpful.

D7

D6

Reorganized FormsRedesigned fieldsets and compressed forms by using vertical tabs.

Primary actions separated from tabsAdding content used be in the same location as browsing lists of existing content.

Usability highlights

Designer & developer simplifications.

Redesigned appearanceApplying a theme is now modernized and easier to understand which theme is active

Adding features (modules) workflow improvedModules now have direct links to permissions and configuration settings. Outdated modules can be updated within Drupal.

Clearing cache more accessible.Developers and themers can now clear cache without having to scroll.

Upgrade managerModules with newly released revisions can now be updated without leaving Drupal.

36

Drupal Gardens

Built on Drupal 7Built to help people get over the hurdle of installing Drupal and figuring out which modules to use.

WYSIWYGContent can now be formatted

Media supportMedia can be uploaded, reused, or added from third party vendors like Flickr

40

Drupal 8 wish list...

More testing & solid metrics

Drupal Gardens will become a platform for user testing and getting access to usage data.

Page improvements

Improve Drupal’s page model

User think about pages top down - add a page, give it a layout, add widgets, add content.

Block improvements

Drag and drop featuresEliminate need to duplicate blocks to place in different regions

Drop here

Module administration improvements

Too much scrolling. Too often you have to click to enable/disable, scroll way down, submit. Repeat.

Easier form creation

Building & styling forms should be easier. Form Builder should be advanced

Content types

Creating content types and managing fields could be improved

Drop here

Interaction Guidelines

Interaction standards should emerge to answer questions like:– Best practice use of:

tabswizardsbuttonsdrag & dropforms & form elementsetc.

– Accessibility standards– Help standards

48

Summary

Thanks!

D7 will be a huge step forward!

The Drupal community should be proud of its accomplishments. We’re proud!

If you want to help Drupal get better...

To help Drupal.org...http://drupal.org/node/704062

To help Drupal...http://drupal.org/contribute

We’re Hiring!

Do you love working with Drupal?

If so, Acquia is hiring:–Engineering & design–Client advisors and consulting–Inside sales

Check out openings athttp://acquia.com/careers

Questions

For more information:– http://acquia.com

– http://twitter.com/acquia

– http://twitter.com/drupal

Contact Acquia:– 888.9.ACQUIA

– sales@acquia.com

Try Drupal 7 – Sign up for beta code at http://drupalgardens.com

– Download at http://drupal.org/project/drupal

Download Acquia’s Drupal Stack Installers– http://acquia.com/download

– Available for Debian, Ubuntu, Windows & Mac

Recording of today’s event and slideswill be posted at:

http://acquia.com/community/resources/recorded_webinars