I like the way you say 'we' there!
We should definitely separate it from the Update/Submit button.. that is
just leading to confusion until you know what it is for. We could try to
keep all the relevant fields together and put a button to bring up an
appropriate control perhaps, yes.
I don't really think that the jump to the bottom of the page after
submitting is really encouraging the comment at the right point as it is
separating the comment event from what is being commented on! OK, so you
can reply to the empty comment to say why you did those actions but I
don't think that is encouraging enough.
Interestingly, in the current version we appear to have the
add-a-comment field above the change history. If Tom is right about the
position of the submit button, we could now just be using that submit
button to trigger submitting all changes instead. Is that reasonable?
Cheers,
Gary
On 06/02/13 16:46, Tom Kitchin wrote:
Okay, I can see the reasoning there, Gary. In that case, how about moving
the accept/reassign/resolve stuff to the Overview section? The Status is
already there, we just have to make it editable and add an Assignee field,
or maybe create some status changing buttons below the Overview or
something along those lines. Taking that functionality out of the submit
button will make it clearer.
Your point about keeping state changes together makes sense to me but at
the moment I don't think the submit button encourages that in any case -
it's at the top, and it jumps to the comment field when used. This
encourages comments (great!) but not changing anything else in-between
because it's just hopped over it. If the status/assignment/etc. changes
were made below the spy rather than above it I suspect it would encourage
users to think about the rest of the ticket while they did so, in case
anything else they wanted to change at the same time occurs to them. The
spy is a bit of a psychological barrier, to my mind - anything above it is
going to be perceived as *the* single fundamental action the user is doing,
while anything done below it is one part of a set of edits to the whole
ticket, and other necessary changes will probably be considered at the same
time.
Amateur psychology at best, I grant you.
Tom
On 6 February 2013 10:48, Gary Martin <[email protected]> wrote:
On 31/01/13 22:00, Tom Kitchin wrote:
Hi,
I've been following along in the discussion and I've been encouraged to
weigh in, so I've just spent a bit of time playing with the ticket layout,
and my thoughts are below.
My first thought is that the scroll spy doesn't really suit the layout, as
has been suggested - on my laptop at least it takes up a considerable
amount of screen estate without providing much value - the ticket itself
simply isn't long enough to warrant it. As has also already been noted,
the "Modify ticket" button also functions differently from the line of
similarly styled buttons next to it. It might work better if the Modify
ticket button was visibly separated from the positional buttons, and
became
the Update/Submit/whatever button when in edit mode instead of having the
"Update (leave)" button above it. This would cut back on the size of the
spy a bit without losing functionality. The length of the change history
isn't a problem if the spy is kept this way, as well - collapsing it
strikes me as a bit clunky.
I think there's a strange overlap on changes to comments. I agree that
any
change should allow for leaving a comment with it, but then we have a
section called "Change history" in the page but "Comments" in the spy, and
the "Submit changes" button being used to submit a comment even if you're
not in edit mode. We should encourage discussion of tickets where
relevant, so making commentary without change easy would be best, I think.
Perhaps just reducing the "Submit changes" text of the button under the
comments box to "Submit" would be enough of a change there? I suspect
that
a comments box on a ticket with "Submit changes" under it would make me
nervous, while just "Submit" reads as submitting a comment when commenting
and submitting changes when editing. Similarly, the Comments navigation
button could read "History" instead, which I think also carries a dual
meaning which will make sense to people looking for past comments and
people looking for the change history.
I think accept/reassign/resolve should be buttons outside of edit mode,
and
should act immediately rather than need submitting. If they're a set of
actual buttons their purpose and immediate effect is completely clear,
while embedding them in the Update button dropdown is confusing. Unless
you check the dropdown, what does "Update (leave)" mean, anyway?
Tom
Sorry I have taken so long to consider this. And thanks for the great
feedback Tom!
The accept/reassign/resolve actions still really require a submit action,
particularly as we want to be able to leave a comment on the associated
event. Even with the case of accepting a ticket, it is not clear cut that a
comment would not be required even if it is less likely. Also, keeping
these state changes together with other ticket edits seems better to me so
that one comment can cover any important things that need to be said about
the changes as a whole.
The only area where I think that there is an excuse for immediate
submission would be things like ticket watching if we are happy that such
things should not end up being a part of the ticket history.
Cheers,
Gary
