User interface remarks

From Dokeos

Here we present a collection of user interface remarks and suggestions. To keep this page a little bit organised, please discuss in the corresponding talk page.

1 Inconsistency
2 Look and feel
3 Some suggestions about general layout
- 3.1 Announcements

Inconsistency

In some tools (e.g. Agenda) you have to go back to the list after adding an item. In other tools, there's a page in between with a link 'back to list' to go back. The first option is better, because it requires less clicking.

Developer agreement: we always go back to the list, and show a message explaining what happened (item added / deleted / modified ...).

There are 2 navigation tools: breadcrumbs and tool shortcuts. According to Jakob Nielsen (theory of usability) there should only be one way of navigating.

This has been solved, since the administrator can decide if he wants the tool shortcuts to be visible or invisible.

The interface of the documents tool is very confusing. Top right, there's a link to upload a document, top left to watch a slideshow and on top of the documents list, there are a few more buttons. This tool should be simplified.
When you want to edit an existing html-document in the documents tool, there are three different OK-buttond. This is very confusing for a user. Moreover, the information isn't in order of importance. A better order would be: first the document itself, after that the comment and finally the metadate.
Learning path too has it's buttons all over the screen. Another remark is that the button to upload a document is more eye-catching than the one to create a learning path, which actually is more important.
The help-button could be centered on the right, at the same hight of the course title. There's a suggestion from Thomas as well to remove the buoy-icon, but not everybody agrees on that.
When a link is opened, there is some confusion as well. Sometimes the link is opened in a new window, sometimes in the same one. A suggestion is to add an admin-option to decide this, but default a link should be opened in the same window.
According to some, the exercise tool is the most frustrating tool in Dokeos. It is complicated and has a very low usability. You must click several different buttons to be able to adjust a test. When you compare Dokeos to HotPotatoes for example, it's obviace that the last one is a lot easier to work with.

Suggestion: make more clearly the distinction between tests and questions (this is also a language problem)

Suggestion: editing a question means editing everything: the question text and the question type and the answers and feedback.

There is a big difference between uploading a new document, where you can add comment later on, and adding a group, where all options can be added immediately. In the groups tool, you can choose if you want to add a group, or fill it, empty it,... when you make a learning path however, you must click on new learning path for no matter which action.

There has been a discussion about this before, and the solution was to keep a field for the most common properties.

Forum has 2 buttons to manage the forum, leading to the same page

This is being solved with the refactoring of the forum.

There is some discussion about the use of the cancel-button at the bottom of forms as well. This button is not frequently used, but when people click it by accident, they must start all over to enter their data.

A solution not to have to remove the button is to make it smaller, and so less obvious.

Developer agreement: we do not use the cancel button anymore

Look and feel

According to certain usability rules, a good website only has 2 colours. This two colours could be white and blue, and maybe an extra tint of blue or grey to get a good effect and a clean, professional look.

Accepted suggestion: remove the orange and replace it by blue frames

Suggestion: only use one shade of blue instead of three.

There's a suggestion to remove one of the three headers, to save room. Some disagree with this since all headers have their own purpose.

The amount of banners in Dokeos will be a setting the administrator can adjust. There's some discussion about what will be the default. One possibility is to remove the third light blue bar and the tool shortcuts as well.

The navigation structure, on the left of documents as in Blackboard, could be entered as well.

Patrick has done some research on that before and will add the code (Wolfgang has also done some experimenting with this).

Another idea to save room (instead of removing headers) is to open everything in a new window. However, very few are in favor of this.

Horizontal scrollbars should be avoided.

There's a suggestion to avoid vertical scrollbars as well, at least in the menu, and to replace them by 'up' and 'down' links, but the majority is against this. An other option is to work with ' ' and '-' and to fold or unfold certain parts of the menu this way.

This concerns only the "frame based" tool pages. But vertical scrollbars are basically unavoidable if one goes with frames, because whenever a menu or list, etc of a course becomes longer than a few entries, it will be more than what can be displayed in the frame box assigned and will need vertical scrollbars so the options further down can even be reached. Much of this depends on users' browser and screen settings and can't even be influenced from server side.

Re-consideration of the use of frames in search of a frameless solution may be worthwhile. --Wolfgang 13:25, 26 Feb 2005 (CET)

The 'next' and 'previous' buttons in learning path are a specific part of the learning path and should be placed within this menu, instead of in the header.

Some suggestions about general layout

Everything is standing rather low, on top lots of space is being taken by the headers, the titles, the navigation tools,� Below a few possible solutions will be offered. It might be a good thing to let the administrator decide how many headers there�ll be, where the titles are,� or to just have a few templates he can choose from.

Place the student/teacher view and the help button on one line by using tabs in the teacher view. There is no need for this in the student view since those options aren�t available there.

Open/closed Eye and "X" substitute Hide/Remove in Teacher View of Front Page of the course?

Put the title of the course in the top header and center it. (Check for the size of the title to make sure it�s not too long)

Remove the title �Documents� and in stead of that make the item larger in the breadcrumbs.

Lists are used in several places (documents, groups, learning path, exercises and users), but they have a different view everywhere. A proposal to have only one look and feel for lists:
- Switch colours between white and light grey per row, and hover darker grey.
- Always use �modify� for the icons to modify, remove,� Now users has �edit� on top of that column and in the exercise tool, all the icons are in separate columns.
- Put other actions on top of the table with a link all the time. Now the upload function on top of documents for example is completely on top of the table.

This way of working doesn�t need the breadcrumbs and tool shortcuts, everything can be selected in the menu.

When the learning path is used for example, or something where lots of space is needed, the menu could be changed in a little bar to the left of the screen, with the icons that are used in the tool shortcuts.

The student/teacher view and the help are added to the main menu in the header.

In the first option, the rectangle with the word �Dokeos� in it, could be made larger, and the logo of the institution that uses Dokeos could be placed there.

This one remains very close to the current lay-out. The only difference is that the title is gone (larger in breadcrumbs) and the view and help are put in one line.