| Version 25 (modified by danvisel, 16 years ago) (diff) |
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- Usability Issues
- Comments
Usability Issues
0. Introduction
This page is to focus on broader areas of Sophie 2 functionality which impact product usability.; this page is purposefully not focused on the level of individual tasks. I've focused on several major sections of Sophie's functionality and added use cases to make it clear how these issues will appear in the real world. A subsection (name TK) discusses how well this works in the current version of Sophie 2 and suggests things that might need to change.
This page will be expanded as usability testing begins.
1. Timelines
Importance = high.
(See Steve's page here.)
1.1. Time-based media on a page
(usecase: people want to put a video or audio file on a page and have it work without messing with timelines more than they have to.)
1.2. Slideshows
(usecase: people have a bunch of pictures which they want to have on sequential pages; while the pages turn, there's audio. More complicated version: same thing, but with video that goes through the pages rather than audio (the video section of the Mozart book).)
2. Page templates
Importance = high.
Related issues: copying/pasting frames; shared frame/shared content problem.
Does locking content help things? Can this be made comprehensible?
Current implementation
While there is some page template functionality, it's not in its final state, and it's hard to gauge how well it will work. Another problem is the lack of flows.
3. Frames and flows
Importance = high.
This is essentially the problem of basic users wanting to use text that spans pages.
Possibly immense related problem: interaction between flow frames and page templates.
Current implementation
Right now we don't have a way to use flows on the same page or across pages.
Use case 1: standard book with single flow frame
(How do we instruct people how to do this? Do they set the page up, then insert the text? What if they insert the text, then set up the page, then want subsequent pages to use that layout?)
Use case 2: book with parallel flow frames
Use case 3: book with several flows in series
Chaptering: does this merit a separate section? Obviously not going to be in there, but it is something people are going to want in some form.
4. Sophie Server integration
Importance = medium.
5. Book templates
Problem in Sophie 1: because of limited functionality (no links, no timelines, no page templates) book templates were rarely used.
Shift's UI proposal for new books suggested a method for bringing the book templates upfront; this would be a better way to implement them than the dragging from the palette to the workspace.
(how important are these?)
Current implementation
We have book templates, but they can't actually be used.
6. Anchoring
Importance = medium.
Current implementation
None: no flows mean no anchoring.
7. Show/hide issues
(do we need to dig this up again?)
connected to: timelines, page structure palette
8. Text styles
(confusion between character & paragraph application.)
9. Bug reporting
(See my user bug tracking page. Not sure if this should actually go in here; but maybe the part about reporting in the app goes in from a usability standpoint - this is something we should be getting feedback on.)
10. Resource handling
(basically: dealing with large numbers of resources in a book; sorting, filtering; importing everything at once. If we don't have drag and drop, this could become an issue to solve.)
11. Comment frames
Comment frames became an enormous part of the justification for Sophie 1; they have not yet been implemented in Sophie 2.
Integration with Sophie server?
Current implementation
None.
12. Embedded books
Problem in Sophie 1: confusion between embedded books on the page of other books and opening in their own window; confusion between embedded books that were part of the container book's file structure and those that were linked. UI needed to be much clearer.
(in demos this is looking much better - small buttons for page turning.)
Embedded books also require a much clearer sense of structure: a tree diagram somewhere (books palette?) should tell you what's embedded in what.
Current implementation
Can ostensibly import embedded book via Insert > Book menu item; this doesn't seem very functional. This is a better way of embedding a book than the old drag method.
Embedded books palette should display embedded books (does it?).
13. Sophie Reader and annotations
Current Implementation
The current state of the reader app is relatively good: it does what it's supposed to. Annotations don't seem to be working yet, or at least I can't get them to work. Sophie Server integration isn't there, nor are comment frames.
14. Publishing
(where is this in the schedule?)
Comments
We need a collection of Sophie 1 timeline usecases so we can go through how those will be handled in Sophie 2.
